Volksbühne
am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz

The Great Schlingensief Insult

With Heinrich Horwitz, Raúl Krauthausen, Philipp Ruch and Others

Tuesday, November 17, 2026

8:00 pm

Vorbühne

Trying to canonise or worship Christoph Schlingensief’s work would be to ignore or trivialise it. His artistic interventions always implied putting his own claims and statements to the test publicly. His work was challenging, provocative and transgressive – for himself and for others – yet always also full of human warmth, heartfelt as well as vulnerable. Schlingensief boldly addressed issues such as social inclusion and German colonial history at a moment in time, when neither was acknowledged to be a prominent topic in the cultural and public landscape. And these days, showing his films in public will inevitably entail a pile of trigger warnings.

On the occasion of the exhibition Es ist nicht mehr mein Problem, macht eure Scheiße alleine (It’s not my problem anymore, deal with your own shit) at Gropius Bau, the Volksbühne brings Christoph Schlingensief’s work back on the stage where his theatre career began in 1993. Schlingensief excelled in the art of offending the public, and if we now make a try at affectionately insulting him back, it only shows how seriously we take him and his work. We want to encourage the critical discussion he deserves, and present six individuals offending him back in six different ways – and from a radically subjective point of view. And for those of you who don’t remember or weren’t around back then, we’ll dive right back into the thick of it with video clips showing TV satires, political activism performances and the staged spectacles he produced over time.

With Heinrich Horwitz, Raúl Krauthausen, Philipp Ruch and others

Die große Schlingensief-Beschimpfung takes place in collaboration with Gropius Bau on the occasion of the exhibition Christoph Schlingensief: Es ist nicht mehr mein Problem, macht eure Scheiße alleine (9.10.2026–17.1.2027).