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Christoph Schlingesief
schlingensief
Der König wohnt in Mir, 2008

Prophecy, transience and religiosity are the basic themes at the core of the work, Der König wohnt in Mir [The King lives in me] by the action artist and director Christoph Schlingensief. On a stage of rough boards, he interweaves the filmic and photographic impressions of a journey to Nepal with the everyday course of a (Western socialised) sick person's sufferings and leads the observer through a sequence of rooms furnished with medical stage props: beginning in the waiting room, we pass through the consulting room, an operating theatre and recovery room as far as the place of leave-taking. Alongside photographs, each of the rooms receives one of the six external video fireplaces, which show pictures of monks, sacrificial ceremonies of a brickworks and a hospice in India. Schlingensief staged himself in them as a distanced traveller – which he, however, did not remain for long: only a short time after his return, he was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. In a sense of foreboding, the previously created progression already ended in a Beuys Room (or also: a diagnostic room), which relates to the latter's installation zeige deine Wunde [Show your Wound] from the 1970s: this also took illness and transience as its topic and is simultaneously an avowal and an appeal, as according to Beuys, we "have to manifest the illness, we want to cure."

schlingensief
Drei Sonnen / Prozession, 2008

Christoph Schlingensief, * 1960 in Oberhausen (D), lives and works in Berlin (D)

Christoph Schlingensief, Der König wohnt in Mir, 2008
mixed media installation
4:44 min., loop
dimensions variable (space: 6,6 x 7,3 m, chimneys each 112 x 150 x 40 cm),
photographs: Aino Laberenz and Christoph Schlingensief, videos: Christoph Schlingensief, editing: Lilli Kuschel, Stefan Schmied and Christoph Schlingensief
installation view Kunstraum Innsbruck, 2008
courtesy Christoph Schlingensief & Kunstraum Innsbruck, 2008
photo: Leonard Schattschneider

Christoph Schlingensief, Drei Sonnen / Prozession, 2008
16-mm film digitalized (b/w, sound)
4 min., loop
film: Christoph Schlingensief
editing: Heta Multanen and Christoph Schlingensief
courtesy Christoph Schlingensief