Gropius Bau stages Schlingensief's 'Queen as Nazi' art — SkimNews
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- Gropius Bau's retrospective "It's Not Your Problem Anymore, Deal With Your Own Shit" revisits Christoph Schlingensief's legacy and centers on his 2006 Volksbühne production "Kaprow City," which drew the Sunday Express headline "Fury at German play that shows Queen as a Nazi"
- Kaprow City staged scenes including the Queen performing a Hitler salute, re-enacting the paparazzi chase that led to Diana's fatal crash, placing Diana in bed with two men with Down's syndrome, and pelting Camilla with animal blood
- The Gropius Bau installed roughly half of Schlingensief's original rotating animatograph stage on the exact site where Joseph Beuys exhibited his Stag Monuments
- Schlingensief, who died of lung cancer in 2010 just shy of his 50th birthday, cast German TV personality Jenny Elvers for the production to mirror Diana's tabloid trajectory
- His anti-far-right works — a Hamlet featuring former far-right extremists and the 2000 Big Brother-style container "Ausländer Raus!" in Vienna, where audiences voted on deportations — are framed as strikingly relevant amid the AfD's rise in Germany
- His widow Aino Laberenz, who manages his estate, warns against reducing Kaprow City to its Diana angle, arguing it sat within a wider artistic universe of theatre, film, and media power
Why it matters: The retrospective lands as the AfD's rise makes Schlingensief's confrontational anti-far-right works — a Hamlet with former extremists and a deportation-voting container piece — newly relevant, while his widow pushes back on reducing Kaprow City to its Diana melodrama.
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