"The view in the face
of a human that is helped
is the view into a beautiful landscape:
friend! friend! friend!"

This is the first draft of a translation of the Chance 2000 platform and core instruments of propaganda. It may be awkward in parts, but in the interest of the broad and quick distribution of this brilliant innovation in national politics we have decided to feature it anyhow.

Germany 1998:

Two years before the New Millenium a new form of Political Party came into existence: CHANCE 2000 - The Party of the Last Chance.

In the midst of an election that was one of the most important in postfascist Germany an artist jumped into the political arena to "make politics more aesthetic and aesthetics more political".

The film and theater director and talk show host Christoph Schlingensief started the campaign: "VOTE YOURSELF!" In Berlin he started the project with an "Election Circus". Together with a famous circus-family from former East Germany and with his crew of actors and his family of handicapped performers he founded CHANCE 2000 - Party of the Last Chance in a circus tent in Berlin/Prenzlauer Berg. The message for the Republic was: "Vote Yourself, we know how to do it!"

Every citizen was asked to become an independent candidate for the new Bundestag. Manuals were sent out how to become a direct candidate. And many different people realized their chance to "prove that they exist" by bringing their name on the ballot sheet: "Chance Meier", "Chance Mueller", "Chance Schmidt".

If you managed to collect 200 signatures of support in your political region you were part of the game and you could vote yourself. Why not voting somebody you know by heart, you trust and love?

Parallel to these "direct democrats" CHANCE 2000 developed into a network of different party subgroups in many German regions. In every province the party had to collect 2000 support signatures in order to be accepted as a normal party.

The main CHANCE 2000 political demand was that unemployment must be accepted as a profession. To be unemployed means to have a heavy job! Millions of unemployed are made invisible. They have to start making a picture of themselves again. The most important goal is to make them visible and activate them: "Doing, doing, doing!" Just do it. Don't hesitate, just do something with your life, no matter what, the most important thing is to start doing something, e.g. vote yourself. Go out and get your support from your neighbours and prove your existence.

And we called millions unemployed to come to the Wolfgangslake with us to visit our chancellor Kohl in his summer residence in Austria. We calculated that if six million people jumped into the water at once, the water level of the lake would rise so much that it would flood the little house of Helmut Kohl.

Doing, doing, doing, because we want to help, help, help.

And we wanted to help Helmut Kohl also. After Schlingensief had asked the unemployed masses to bring him the head of Helmut Kohl in his talk show "TALK 2000" at the end of 1997 and after he had called to kill Kohl at the documenta X in Kassel (hybrid work space) where he got arrested we changed our message: from KILL KOHL to HELP HELMUT!

We said: everybody is our friend, friend, friend! The hymn of the party was a little song by Bertolt Brecht: "The view in the face/ of a human that is helped/ is the view into a beautiful landscape: friend! friend! friend!" This song was the leitmotif that accompanied our mission since 1997 when Schlingensief made his street-action "Train-Station-Mission: PASSION POSSIBLE - 48 hours survival for Germany" in Hamburg. For one week he left the temple of theatre and hit the streets with street activism,art demonstrations, processions, etc. At the Hamburg Hauptbahnhof (Central Station)a little container was built as an "angstfree room" where the junkies and homeless people found art & soup. They could express themselves through open mikes and Schlingensief collected money for them in a huge Gala.

Many prominent people became supporter of this "post-caritative mobile theatre commando" (Carl Hegemann, Schlingensiefs dramaturg). Since then we demonstrated our good-will: "Poor People help the Rich". And our message to the Rich was: give away your money. And save the market economy. And the media started tp call Schlingensief "Jesus of the unemployed".

We did not say: we want the communist market, we only said: this reality is occupied by parties, churches, labour unions, the media, etc. This is System I. We want into System II. Because "the way persists, even if the goal explodes" (Heiner Müller). Because in a world where money is the only value that makes orientation possible, humanity cannot survive (Heiner Müller said this also).

Money has a become a fetish, a latter-day taboo. Rich people can only liberate themselves by giving away their money. And only the poor can help them - by accepting that money. Modern management theories like Tom Peters' suggest that in this world only those companies can survive that take values like human dignity very seriously. Not selling the customers stuff, but serving the people is the new orientation in the market place.

CHANCE 2000 tried to connect "post-heroic management" (Dirk Baecker) with the epic theatre as envisioned by Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Müller. While in the economic sphere the difference between superior and employees has to be minimized in "flat hierarchies," in the room of theatre the difference between actors and audience has to be eliminated: "The 4th Wall has to fall!", as Brecht said.

Germany 1998:

On Bertolt Brechts 100th Birthday we started the revolution, inspired from the coming of the New Millenium and the numerical mystics of dates: 1998 - 1989 - 1968 ... While in 1989 the Wall fell, we felt that in 1998 the 4th wall had to fall. The revolution has to take place in the theatre, at least in Germany, the country of the failing revolutions and the triumphant counterrevolutions: 1918, 1848 ... 150 years of "failure as chance" ... Back then the radicaldemocratic "We Are The People!" ("Wir sind das VOLK!") was changed into the volkish-nationalist "We Are One People!" ("Wir sind EIN Volk!"): after 1848 and in 1989. In 1998 we said: "You Are one Volk: 1 V!", meaning: everybody. WE THE PEOPLE.

While intellectuals in the tradition from Niklas Luhmann like Dirk Baecker show that we can never dissolve the differences between those opposites, Schlingensief proved in his work of theatre the opposite. His ensemble consists of friends: famous actors and Schlingensiefs little theatre-family of handicapped people who prove that they can express themselves more vivid and authentic than artists and actors. And in Hamburg it showed that the street people from the real world can be better performers by expressing themselves than the professional performers from the theatre-world.In this respect Brecht's vision of the epic theatre has become a reality. This goes far beyond humanitarian engagement of the theatre-left who give little shows for the excluded and mistreated. In this case, the real people themselves have -without knowing- revolutionized the theatre. It is not decided yet: is it art, is it politics? Have we made politics more aesthetic or aesthetics more political? CHANCE 2000 is an in-between and it's vitality lives from this ambivalence.

Only Tom Peters' parole: "Failing as Chance" has come to honour. We failed gloriously with a result of 0,1% That was our chance...

"Failure as chance" also became true financially. Of course we have not got money back from the government and went bankrupt. And it showed, that "mass media is only interested in self-destruction, not in self- salvation", as Schlingensief always said. His critics called him the "most-media-horney media-hater" for he managed to stay in the media like no other star before. Since his own talk show "TALK 2000" fall '97 and his spectacular arrest at the documenta he has been invited in all talk- shows there are on German TV and he succeeded in winning two of the most popular talk show hosts as mentors for CHANCE 2000: Harald Schmidt and Alfred Biolek supportet us and spend money, as well as the prominent designer Joop. And -of course- a majority of the art and theatre world (Elfried Jelinek wrote in our internet-thinktank and send a plastic duck to the Wolfgangssee, Sepp Bierbichler spend his actors-price-money for Schlingensief, Schlingensiefs chief Frank Castorf featured the whole show, etc.).

So CHANCE 2000 became the running gag of last year's eleciton debacle, we were the filler for mass media's summer hole. At the Wolfgangssee- Spectacle beginning of August more camera teams appeared than unemployed: on the shores, on boats in the water, in the air with helicopters. Mass media filmed themselves, while Millions of unemployed proved their autonomy by staying home and having their Wolfgangssee in their own bath room.

After the Wolfgangssee-Spectacle only the message of our bankruptcy brought the m edia attention back on us, while we declared CHANCE 2000 International. We became a company. We sold art warrants: if we get profit, you get your shareholders' value, if not the warrant transforms automatically into art. We think that by this measure we are ahead of our times again, because soon all parties will admit that in reality they are companies.

Berlin, 27.Septembre 1998:

A little revolution has happened in the Federal Republic. For the first time the German "Volk" has elected a new chancellor and we enter the "Berlin Republic" with a red-green Bundesgovernment. King Kohl and the conservatives lost the elections by an earth-slide victory of the oppostion. CHANCE 2000 celebrated the "Election Debacle" in the "Volksbühne" in former East Berlin: two minutes before the first results were broadcasted, Schlingensief cut the cables- we were liberated. This must be System II. As the logical next step we founded a State.

Berlin, 3. Octobre 1998:

FAREWELL FROM GERMANY. At the Congress 3000 Schlingensief declared the Chance State, dressed as a Rabbi. From the "Jesus of the unemployed" to the "Moses of the metaphysical homeless". If we get 3 normal nation-states to accept our statehood, we get a seat in the UN. Forget the Bundestag - forward to New York! Chance State, Church of Chance, Chance World... the rhizom lives and prospers. Schlingensief just returned from his mission in Africa and starts the State in 2 weeks. The State -as the party-intellectual Dr. Druff describes it- is an "ideal state of Israel", a protection zone for the mistreated masses and the metaphysical homeless. Embassies were opened in Basel, Johannesburg, Sarajevo (with artists from the art-state NSK).

Europe 1999:

The Party is now in the hands of us, original chancists in Frankfurt/ Main. We want to take part in the European elections this year.

From today -1.1.1999- Frankfurt is the true capital of Europe as it has always been the secret capital of postwar Germany: Bankfurt/Mainhattan. Instead of the "Berlin Republic" we have declared a "Frankfurt Republic". After our Farewell from Germany we want to expand in Europe, to hack the "Brussel Republic" with our little subpolitical Y2K-bug. Therefore we are looking for collaborateurs and co-workers. And therefore we have changed our label into: CHANGE 2000. Send your comments to: http://www.chance2000.com (thinktank, Kommentar).

Or contact us in Frankfurt...

In August we will take part in the Bordercamp '99 in Zittau with "Kein Mensch ist illegal!" instead of jumping in the Wolfgangslake (Helmut Kohl is now finally dead!). On March 20th we organized the "Chance World Congress" in Berlin and also planned is a "cosmic bus tour with theatrical revolutionaries". A new book with texts from the thinktank etc. and a Chance CD with booklet and fictional passport was introduced at the Chance World Congress. During July and August we will organize a multimedia-spectacle-thing at the Kunsthalle Schirn.