Christof Schlingensief - Three Radio Plays (Rocky Dutschke `68, Freakstars 3000 & Lager ohne Grenzen)

Christoph Schlingensief (born October 24, 1960 in Oberhausen, died August 21, 2010) was a German film director, theatre director, actor, author, artist, and talkshow host.

In the beginning he organized culture-events in the cellar of his parents house. Artists like Helge Schneider or Theo Jörgensmann performned at this place.
He created controversial and provocative theatre pieces as well as motion pictures. One of his main works, the so-called "Germany-Trilogy" consisting of the movies "Hundert Jahre Adolf Hitler"("A Hundred Years Of Adolf Hitler"), "Das deutsche Kettensägenmassaker"("The German Chainsaw-Massacre) and "Terror 2000" which handle three markpoints in German history of the 20th century. While "Hundert Jahre Adolf Hitler" is about the last hours of Adolf Hitler, "Das deutsche Kettensägen-Massaker" heads the German reunion of 1989 and shows a few East-German people who cross the border to visit West-Germany and get slaughtered by a psychopathic family with non-running chainsaws. "Terror 2000" is about the 1970´s Red Army Faction terror in Germany.

In 1993 he debuted as a theatre director at the Berliner Volksbühne with “100 Years of the CDU – Games Without Frontiers”. This was followed by various projects outside the theatre, such as the Mission project for drug addicts and the homeless at Hamburg Central Station in 1997, “Passion Impossible – 7 Days Emergency Call for Germany” or, in 2000, the Big Brother game for asylum seekers in Vienna, “Please Love Austria”.

In 1997 he was arrested at documenta X during an art action because he used a sign with the inscription “Kill Helmut Kohl”. In 1998 he founded the party “Chance 2000” ("Opportunity 2000") and took part in the campaign for elections to the Bundestag.

Schlingensief is an extremely provocative artist and his major targets are the German and Austrian identity.

Christof Schlingensief produced a few radio plays, we present four of them in this posting:
"Lager ohne Grenzen" about the Kosovo war, "Freakstars 3000" about the normality of handicapped people and two versions of the mind-blowing radio play "Rocky Dutschke `68".

"Rocky Dutschke `68" was produced in 1997 by the WDR (German radio station) and won the "Prix Futura". It is a remake of a theatre play for the "Volksbühne" in Berlin.
This audio collage simulates a meeting of some student activists of the 1968 generation in a radio studio: Amonst others Wolf Biermann, Marget Kleinert (editor of the "Thoughts without pain"-broadcasting) and Heiner Müller are talking about hobbys, work and Rudi Dutschke. This fake broadcasting "assimilates" German history and present and reflects some phenomenons of our trivial media society. Full of provocation and cynicism it shows the thoughtless dealings with language, music and ideologic ideas.

"One of the best radio-shows I ever experienced," as R3000 wrote about this recording over at http://themoreyouthinkaboutit.blogspot.com/ - thanks a lot for bringing the work of Schlingensief back to my attention!

Maybe you want to read the other posting about Christof Schlingensief.

Christof Schlingensief - Three Radio Plays