Otmar Wagner: WUNDE WELT #Ende: Ich.Europa

Otmar Wagner’s “WUNDE WELT #Ending: Me. Europe” is a scenic installation, a visual and audio play in which you might just lose your sense of seeing and hearing. The main question is: “Why do we get up in the morning?” What drives the performance-economy subject out into the day? Is it the self-love which manifests in functioning as a common and useful human capital, as a working customer, as purchasing power? Why, despite all efforts at self-optimisation, does the skin become porous, teeth rot, while the herpes blossoms?

Otmar Wagner, himself a victim of an arson attack on his functioning self in 2009, says:

“Everything grows, a healthy dose of stress is healthy, fit for work keeps you fit, and: yes I want, and if I want, then I can, I want to give birth to myself anew each day. My body is Europa, the virgin abducted from Phoenicia, present-day Syria, incorporated, young, strong, and beautiful, without any indication of rape, but generally super sexy and ready for anything, living in the luxury of Occidental peace, the red traces on the skin are not blue spots but tattooed roses.
Freedom is what is fun and brings profit.

Garbage is separated, in the house, in front of the house door, in the head, and on the borders of Europe. The system works, no wonder. Wonder only takes place in economy, it has the monopoly, the cartel office calls it a day for good. ‘Needs must wait outside’ reads the sign in front of Supermarket Europe, and below in fine print: ‘Please chain up’. Simultaneous job hunt: specialists, without emergency preferred, because emergency is obscene, powerless, violent, perverse.

Here it is like this: Must-haves replace desire, and everything is just like and totally not like it used to be. That is the dialectic. That is our luxury, and hard to understand without a certified language course. Here the Angel of History takes the stage as a surprise guest at the 'European Song Contest'. Precisely which country and interests the angel represents remain unclear. Also its sexual and political orientation remain unclear, along with the meaning of the words ‘Lord’, ‘world’, ‘globalisation’, ‘diligent’, ‘good’, and ‘right’. Nevertheless, he sings, the Angel of History: ‘Dear Lord, be diligent / turn the globe right again / don’t let the world go under / good Lord, please’. This earns loyal hearts, 100 points, and a special prize for melancholy.”