ÜberLebensKunst

The climate activists who showered van Gogh’s painting Sunflowers with tomato soup asked about the value of art in times of existential global crisis. This article takes up this question and seeks the legitimacy of an engagement with art and literature for its own sake, especially in German lessons in schools. The thesis is elaborated that art and literature can support a rational pragmatism for crisis management; but, paradoxically, only if they are practised as a self-sufficient game – also and especially at school.

To demonstrate this, Johan Huizinga’s game theory and Andreas Reckwitz’s work on the creativity dispositive are referred to. Both theoreticians assume that the spheres of play and seriousness, of aestheticization and economization, are increasingly confused. Following this, the current academic world, for example, is shaped by game elements of competition and self performance, and the actions of the climate activists can be interpreted as primarily aesthetically effective, even system-compliant stimuli in Reckwitz’s sense.

In contrast to that, the article argues for a ›climate passivism‹ in the sense of a resource-saving practice of avoidance. However, this is only possible if the affective value of the aesthetic can continue to play out. As Reckwitz also proposes, this would have to be done through repetitive, self-sufficient aesthetic practices. This could also happen in a school and in a literature class that opens up scope for an art that is practiced as a game. On this basis, skills of rational and pragmatic action for crisis management should also be able to benefit.