A postmigrant contrapuntal reading of the refugee crisis and its discourse: 'Foreigners out! Schlingensief's Container'

Abstract

The Christoph Schlingensief performance with the refugee container in front of Vienna State Opera touched and moved people, angered them, or inspired them to reflect critically on their own prejudices and preconceptions. By choosing a central locus in the heart of Vienna, frequented daily by numerous tourists, Christoph Schlingensief managed to attract considerable attention with his artistic-political initiative. Moreover, some tourists thought the performance was the implementation of an actual public initiative to arbitrarily deport as many refugees as possible. Subsequently, Schlingensief was either verbally attacked on television, completely ignored or even derided as politically corrupt, someone who had been 'bought and paid for'. Forcefully engaging with this 'predetermined breaking point', the artist disrupted the power of the asylum dispositif, at least for a brief interval.