"Carnival is a pageant without a stage and without a division into performers and spectators. In the carnival everyone is an active participant, everyone communes in the carnival act. Carnival is lived. Carnival is the world turned inside out." Mikhail M. Bakhtin

Masked balls are too much. For guests and hosts alike. We're dreading it already.

In the year 2008, a masked ball is one of the acts of naughtiness organized by children referred to by Walter Benjamin in Fritz Fränkel's mescaline protocol. And he knew the true reason for these "wise acts of naughtiness" – the children's discontent at not being capable of magic. For a child, the first source of annoyance is not that the adults are stronger, but that it's not capable of magic. From this, Giorgio Agamben concludes that the "incredible sadness by which children are sometimes overwhelmed results precisely from their awareness of not being capable of magic." And he quotes from a letter written by the childish Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "To live respectably and to live happily are two different things, and the latter will not be possible for me without some kind of magic; for this, something truly supernatural would have to happen – and that is not possible, for in these times magicians no longer exist."

And this was someone who really was capable of magic, and who was closer to the spirits than anyone else. Mozart loved masked balls, and one was held somewhere almost every day. At least every Saturday. Maybe it was something like today's "Pop Idol" TV show. Mozart probably appeared as a trouserless rowdy, running up to the young women and tickling them. And then going home to write "Porgi Amor". Or was it "Bona Nox"?

Last year, we held a masked ball in Beira, the second-largest city in Mozambique. The venue was the Grande Hotel, once the "pride of Africa" and the biggest hotel on the continent, inhabited today by more than 3,000 squatters. In a hotel with little more than 300 rooms. They live in the corridors, in the dining room – although it recently collapsed – in the former cold stores, on the staircases and in the showers. The pool is used for washing, the lift shafts are filled to the top with rubbish, the parquet floors have been used for firewood, but somehow the place feels clean and well-organized. On the roof and on several balconies, huge trees grow out of the concrete.

We exchanged masks with the hotel's inhabitants, listened to Mozart, and shot a long film. It will be called "The Kingdom of Mozartbique".

Mozart visited Africa in 1790, shortly after the premiere of "Cosi fan tutte". We do not know if he ever met Angelo Soliman, the African valet of Prince Wenzel von Liechtenstein. Soliman was a respected member of Viennese society and a frequent guest at the imperial court. Mozart travelled via Egypt down the Congo to Léopoldville. Back in Vienna, a very productive period began, lasting until his death in 1791, during which he composed, among others, "The Magic Flute".

In Africa, masks are considered as tickets, passages or mediators to new phases of life like birth, marriage or death. Or to another world. According to Michel Foucault, masks, make-up and tattoos place a secret, sacred language on the body, taking it to a place that is not part of this world. In the languages of Africa, the word 'mask' does not exist, the name instead referring directly to what is visualized – head spirits, bush creatures, ancestors. It is always something spiritual and inward, whereas in western culture masks always have an external aspect, as well as symbolizing falsehood and deceit.

We are interested in Bakhtin's idea of the carnival – as the ultimate form of sub-version, as a revolutionary impulse: "For this reason, great upheavals, even in the realm of science, are preceded by a certain carnivalization of consciousness". The world turned inside out, "eyes wide shut". As Hubert Fichte wrote, "masks are danced".

In Zurich, we will be premiering parts of "The Kingdom of Mozartbique" and, with Michelle Nicol, giving another masked ball. In the run-up to Art Basel, artists and designers are helping us to create various masks, and the guests are invited to exchange them with us and with each other, to masquerade and to dance the masks.

In the spirit of Bakhtin, we look forward to all manner of naughtiness and carnivalistic dastardliness on the part of our esteemed guests. May they vomit, snog, curse, and pillage. May they tickle, love and fuck each other.

Children know that true happiness is not earned, but that it comes to those who know the magic words, a magician, or the right spirit.

RS, May 2008

Special editions of the full-length film "The Kingdom of Mozartbique" will be shown. "Based On a True Story" 
by RothStauffenberg will be published in late summer by Edition Patrick Frey.