Tue, 12.5.2026
7 PM
7 PM
Opening
MAK – Museum of Applied Arts
© Aino Laberenz
Previous Image
Artist Christoph Schlingensief (1960–2010) was a radical humanist who demolished the boundaries between art, theater, film, and politics and negotiated the exigencies of the present through his complex artistic practice.
13.5.2026—13.9.2026
Upper Exhibition Hall
His productions challenged his audience to assume an active stance—between irritation and insight, onus, and reflection. With an exhibition eponymous with his 2005 quote It’s not my problem anymore!, the MAK is hosting the artist’s first solo show in Austria, the very country he ushered to the center of his social contradictions with his event Bitte liebt Österreich – Erste österreichische Koalitionswoche [Please Love Austria—First Austrian Coalition Week] (2000).
The exhibition unfurls along two timelines stemming from his iconic installation Church of Fear (2003–2005), wherein Schlingensief infused a parodistic faith community with the global post-9/11 mood.
The exhibition unfurls along two timelines stemming from his iconic installation Church of Fear (2003–2005), wherein Schlingensief infused a parodistic faith community with the global post-9/11 mood.
© Aino Laberenz
© Aino Laberenz
Previous Image
Premiering at the 2003 Venice Biennale, it elevated “belief in fear” to dogma. Two directions develop from this point: backwards to the political and per-formative interventions of the late 1990s and early 2000s (e.g., Chance 2000 and Please love Austria) and forward to his cinematic and operatic works (e.g., The African Twin Towers).
Without being a retrospective in the classical sense, the exhibition brings about a dialogue between central elements of his oeuvre and visualizes how his artistic strategies recipro-cally permeate theater, film, installation, and performance to form a composite image of his way of thinking. Not the completed work, but the movement of questioning, doubting, and failing are at the heart of Schlingensief’s practice: “My view is that one can fail despite desire, passion, and purpose. In my own work, failure inevitably was brought about by the dissolution of straightaway and finish, of space and time. Inner acceptance of failure as a necessary precondition for releasing poten-tial makes a lot happen.”
A joint project of the MAK, the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna, and Gropius Bau / Berliner Festspiele
Guest Curator: Raphael Gygax
Assistant Curator: Max Appel-Palma
Without being a retrospective in the classical sense, the exhibition brings about a dialogue between central elements of his oeuvre and visualizes how his artistic strategies recipro-cally permeate theater, film, installation, and performance to form a composite image of his way of thinking. Not the completed work, but the movement of questioning, doubting, and failing are at the heart of Schlingensief’s practice: “My view is that one can fail despite desire, passion, and purpose. In my own work, failure inevitably was brought about by the dissolution of straightaway and finish, of space and time. Inner acceptance of failure as a necessary precondition for releasing poten-tial makes a lot happen.”
A joint project of the MAK, the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna, and Gropius Bau / Berliner Festspiele
Guest Curator: Raphael Gygax
Assistant Curator: Max Appel-Palma