Kammerspiel II – Missa Nigra: action art and theatre in Gallery Oben
In 1978, the painter Hartwig Ebersbach from Leipzig developed the action opera and musical theatre play Kammerspiel II – Missa Nigra, in collaboration with the composer Friedrich Schenker and the group “Neue Musik Hanns Eislers Leipzig.”
This project combined forms of action art with musical and theatrical improvisation. Through the music, Ebersbach’s painting actions were transformed into an analogy of ritual actions. The fact that there was no stage, either at the premiere at the Altes Rathaus Leipzig in 1979, or in 1982 at Gallery Oben in Karl-Marx-Stadt, gave the performances a demonstrative character.
The artists led the audience into a state of excitement that hit the nerve of political everyday life in the GDR, evoking associations with military armament and a sense of individual paralysis in the face of the conflicts between East and West. The act of painting was exhibited in public, making the artist himself the work of art that was used to portray conflicts. A concept of social discourse arose that the didactic policy of the GDR did not anticipate.
Since its foundation, as a sales cooperative, in 1973, Gallery Oben offered a space to artists who pursued their own art practices developing various strategies of demarcation. At the same time, the gallery functioned as a turnstile between a wakeful public – people who were interested in culture and art rather than propaganda and mere entertainment – and artists who were acting progressively, in opposition to ideological transfiguration.
Under the management of Gunar Barthel, who ran Gallery Oben from 1979 until he was forced to leave to West Berlin in 1987, further experimentation with the interlinking of exhibition and performance practice took place. In 1982, entitled “Der Tod des Einzelnen” (The death of the individual), a part of the Missa Nigra was performed by Hartwig Ebersbach (painting), Friedrich Schenker (saxophone), and Burkhart Glaetzner (oboe). As a gallery run by the Kulturbund, Gallery Oben was not a space intended for the staging of performative arts. However, the disassociation from performance practice and theatre operations produced new forms of collaborative authorship. Being open to alternative forms of expression resulted in a shift in existing receptive experiences. In a continuation of the Missa-Nigra project, Lutz Dammbeck presented the Herakles project in 1985, a spatial installation combined with performance. In 1987, the music performance Unsere Heimat (Our Homeland) was staged with Klaus Hähner-Springmühl.
Sources:
Galerie Oben 1973–1993. Hrsg. von der Galerie Oben. Chemnitz 1993.
https://www.bpb.de/themen/deutsche-teilung/autonome-kunst-in-der-ddr/55821/die-galerie-oben/
Date: (1979) 1982
Location: Altes Rathaus Leipzig, Gallery Oben, Karl-Marx-Stadt
Participants: Hartwig Ebersbach (painter), Burkhardt Gloetzner, and Friedrich Schenker (musicians)