Deutsche Oper Berlin has invited Rirkrit Tiravanija to curate their opening festival, along with artist friends based in Berlin, including Anri Sala, Haegue Yang and Danh Vo. The event brings the public together for 30 hours inside the opera house. All of Deutsche Oper becomes a space for artistic interventions where visual art, music, performance, and the audience interact.

As Richard Wagner famously put it, a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) brings together all the elements that make up an opera as we know it: from the singers to the orchestra, the costumes to the set pieces, and the design of the opera house itself. Flipping this idea on its head, Tiravanija asks artists to look beyond the stage––into the orchestra pit, the kitchen, the air conditioning, and everywhere in between. The artists uncover what lies behind the making of a «total work of art,» transforming every possible resource to create new ways of connecting with each other.

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