design*kung-fu

The last eighteen month where quite intense. Never before had this happened. I’ve never been confronted with death and the fight against it in such direct circumstances, by people in my close circle of friends and family members. I was devastated – shocked and sad. Didn’t know what I could do to help, to ease the grief and pain. Out of fear to rake their sorrow even more I kept to myself, didn’t show any reaction – for a while.

But there is one thing I’ve learned. My fear of death is not of death itself. I fear the way of getting there, there painful struggle, the slow creepiness. This fear is important. “Shit important”, as you would say in the Ruhrgebiet or Ruhrpott, the area in Germany where I come from.  People here swear a lot to underline importance. Fear can also be one of the most productive forces to drive critical creativity. Christoph Schlingensief was one of Germany’s most diverse artists. His performances, films and theatre productions often seperated the creative scene. At the age of only 50, on Saturday the 21 of August 2010, Cristoph Schlingensief died after a two-year fight against lung cancer.

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His death made me sad and at the same time, surprised. The man was hardly on my immediate radar and despite his film about the German reunion “German Chainsaw Massacre” I haven’t seen any of his work. Only now that he died, do I begin to come to terms with his life and work. It’s only now that I realise what an amazing man he was, which great critical influence he had and what a large gap he leaves. With his immense ability to disrupt, decompose and provoke (media) attention he often had impact even on the slowest parts of progression; the politicians. During the last two years of his life Schlingensief focused his attention on projects dealing with issues of life and death while documenting his own battle with cancer . Sadly enough he never got to fullfill his dream of building an opera house/festival theatre and theatre shool in  Burkina Faso, West Africa.

Like my freinds and relatives, he will be sorely missed.