»New Germany« with Akinbode Akinbiyi and Elske Rosenfeld

About

The exhibition title »New Germany« represents everyday life at the exhibition location in Hellersdorf: The movement   towards the »reunited« Federal Republic and the internationalization by newcomers, marked by dynamics and constraints, apply in a completely different way on the outskirts of the city, for example is the case in the center of Berlin.
In addition, the title is a reference to the (post) Stalinist " Central Organ of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany " (SED), which still exists today as a party-affiliated newspaper Der Linken . The programmatic name Neues Deutschland(ND), on the other hand, goes back to the efforts of German communists at the time to build an anti-fascist and socialist, i.e. a different Germany. The ND is the successor to an exile newspaper that appeared in Mexico in 1942/43 as Alemania Libre (Free Germany) and from January 1945 as Nueva Alemania (New Germany). In this way, the exhibition combines a historical exposure with the question of which social perspectives can arise in today's constellations between exile, liberation and migration.

In 1965, the future Black Power activist Angela Davis studied with the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno in Frankfurt am Main. There she joined the SDS (Socialist German Student Union) and took part in various protests against the Vietnam War. In June 1968 she became a member of the United States Communist Party. After her imprisonment in the United States, various solidarity campaigns were organized in the GDR, as in other socialist countries in Eastern Europe. The »Angelamania«, as TIME magazine called it in 1972, was reminiscent of the cheering young people received when Davis appeared in public between the GDR state elite and liberation movements after imprisonment at Schönefeld Airport or at the Xth World Youth Festival in 1973. 

In her multimedia installation, the Halle-born artist Elske Rosenfeld recalls the dissident Erika Berthold, who, in contradiction to the claqueurs, spontaneously embraced Davis in order to break through the inhibited star admiration: so to speak, »friendship between nations« against the protocol. While the GDR distinguished itself as an anti-racist state and made Davis part of its own iconography, everyday racism was omnipresent. Rosenfeld's contribution to the Dresden exhibition »1 Million Roses for Angela Davis« 2020/21 in the Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau will be further developed in the context of »New Germany« in the station urbanerkulturen .

As an artist and author, Elske Rosenfeld (* 1974) researches the relationship between body and language in revolutionary events, the history of 1989/90 and forms of dissidence. Your works will be shown at the same time in the exhibition “... or can that go away? Case studies on the post-reunification «can be seen in the nGbK in Kreuzberg. In 2018 she led the project “Artistic Research in the Archives of the GDR Opposition” together with Suza Husse / District Berlin.

Akinbode Akinbiyi , born in 1946 in Oxford, England, commutes between the metropolises of Berlin and Lagos and far beyond. Akinbiyi studied literature and English in Ibadan, Lancaster and Heidelberg. He has lived in Berlin as a photographer and curator for decades and received the renowned Goethe Medal in Weimar in 2016.

In the course of his urban wanderings, the analogue street photographs ( › Street Photography ‹) have grown into diverse groups of works and individual observations. These works have been shown at documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens (2017), the Gropiusbau in Berlin (2020) and at international festivals. For the exhibition in the station urbaner kulturen he will record his journeys from the former Stalinallee via his current Berlin residence in Frankfurter Allee to Hellersdorf with an analog medium format camera and relate them to other cities in the world.

The physical connection between the two artistic positions offers the opportunity for reflection: What did internationalist history mean in the GDR and how does it relate to cosmopolitan projections in Germany today? What friction constellations do artistic contributions arise from in the new Germany and how should the diverse everyday life on the outskirts of the city be viewed?

nGbK project group station urban cultures :  Juan Camilo Alfonso Angulo, Jochen Becker, Fabian Bovens, Eva Hertzsch, Margarete Kiss, Constanze Musterer, Adam Page