The armored male exposed - dance production 'Ernst Junger' - includes related article on the writings of Ernst Junger

Until freshly the artist Hans Haacke and the writer Ernst Junger had just single thing in common: the of gold Lion award, which they each received at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993 Haacke was honored for his installation in the prize-winning German pavilion, in which he evok the one and the other the history of the Biennale during the Fascist years and the political effects of Germany's reunification. Junger, who since the extreme point of World Wax Il has lived quietly in the Swabian Alps (and who has just marked his 100th birthday), received a special of gold Lion from Biennale director Achille Bonita Oliva for his contribution to fresh literature.

Before the Biennale Haacke knew of the writer single through hearsay. "I belonged to a generation," he says, "that did not read Junger probably with serviceable reason." Junger has long been a figure of strife of words in Germany because of his part in preparing the way for the Third Reich. In his writings of the 1920 and early '30 Junger who had won his country's highest award for bravery during the First World War. celebrated the ecstasies of battlefield experience, heaped scorn upon the comforts of bourgeois life and called for a national regime of "total mobilization." The questionable political motifs that frequently lurk behind the polished literary manner of writing of Junger's novels, essays and journals have not ever much troubled the German establishment, allowing On the contrary, in novel decades he has been awarded the prestigious Goethe Prize by dint of the city of Frankfurt; the German conduct has bestowed on him its highest civil award, the Bundesverdienstkreuz; and he has received official visits from Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterrand.

The award of a of gold Lion to Junger came as a great surprise to Haacke. "As a spring I began my first research of Junger," he says, "because I cogitation that some day, in my hold way, I must respond. I immediately called the award a scandal; I was really appalled. on the other hand I wasn't adequately prepared to answer In any case the Lion was a collective prize for the pavilion as a whole, awarded to Nam June Paik, the curator Klaus Bussmann and me Since I not ever actually possessed the Lion, I couldn't simply give it back."

Now Haacke has ground a way to make public his view of Junger A year ago he was invited to conceive the stage design for a fresh dance-theater piece, Ernst Junger, by the agency of Johan Kresnik, a well-known choreographer who has lately installed his company as the resident troupe at the Volksbuhne in Berlin. "In May 1994" Haacke recalls, "I received a phone call from the dramaturge of the Volksbuhne who asked if I might be interested in the throw I looked at photographs of Kresnik's productions and talked the matter above with friends in Berlin. Conceiving a stage design was something that had fascinated me enormously, and I wanted to give it a try" That this throw out would give Haacke the chance to carry on the outside a work on Junger was certainly part of the appeal.

One can easily imagine an affinity between Haacke and Kresnik, who has lengthy considered his dance productions to be demonstrations of left-wing political theses. Kresnik's Choreographic Theater, as he calls it, stands in sharp contrast to the dance-theater of a Pina Bausch, which belongs to a tradition that has lengthy been part of the established stage. A choreographer like Bausch uses the material part as a medium to expres subjective states that are sole indirectly accessible through language. Kresnik wants instead to denounce things that are in like manner obvious that no words are required to point them without In Ernst Junger, Kresnik takes aim at the fact that, as he dioceses it, warfare and male sexuality are simply sum of two units sides of the same coin.

This theme is uncouthly appropriate for Kresnik, who since the late '60 has built his reputation not thus much on dance innovation as upon the staging of explicitly ensanguined violent scenes. It is for this that his Choreographic Theater has become notorious. Many of his productions have been based upon literary or historical figures who met a violent end: Sylvia Plath, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Oedipus, Ulrike Meinhof, Hosa Luxemburg Horrifying images of male brutality have, in fact, been belonging to all throughout Kresnik's pieces; Junger is simply the first "perpetrator" around whom he has created a work.

For the production at the Volksbuhne Haacke created an overall stage design that is spare and reductive. The entire space of the stage is meant to recall the Wehrmacht captain's uniform that Junger wore as an occupation officer in Paris during World War II. High above the stage loom a giant officer's cap bearing an imperial eagle, swastika and oak-leaf cluster. Bordering the sides of the stage floor are immense shoulder epaulets and collar insignia of gleaming silver. The back of the stage consists of a semicircular wall made of dark carburet of iron plates. "The horizon of the stage is the back of the head," explains Haacke. "I chose carburet of iron because it is both directly and metaphorically impenetrable, responding to neither argument nor emotion. This is a material that corresponds to Junger's essential personality. I wanted it as devoid of warmth [i]or[/i] heat as possible."