The Days Were Numbered
Artist books and magazines with original artwork and photography from the late GDR and East Germany
29/11/25—15/02/26
Anschlag, Ariadnefabrik, Bizarre Städte, Braegen, Entwerter/Oder, Herzattacke, Liane, Mikado, Reizwolf, Schaden, Sno’Boy, Spinne, UND, U.S.W., Verwendung, Zweite Person, Sascha Anderson, Claus Bach, Micha Brendel, Lutz Dammbeck, Stefan Döring, Klaus Elle, Elke Erb, Lutz Fleischer, Rainer Görss, Durs Grünbein, Gino Hahnemann, Sabine Herrmann, Frieder Heinze, Matthias Baader Holst, Sabine Jahn, Johannes Jansen, Petra Kasten, Klaus Killisch, Helge Leiberg, Via Lewandowsky, Robert Lippok, Ronald Lippok, Oskar Manigk, Bert Papenfuß, Hans Scheuerecker, Christine Schlegel, Cornelia Schleime, Gabriele Stötzer, Olaf Wegewitz, Karin Wieckhorst, Lutz Wohlrab et al.
Following a series of exhibitions at the Brandenburg State Museum of Modern Art, which for more than a year have explored art and its diverse, often transdisciplinary, forms of expression in 1980s East German art, this exhibition, dedicated to the diverse output of books and pamphlets, represents a culmination.
It draws primarily from the collection of the Brandenburg State Museum of Modern Art and can therefore also be understood as a further, retrospective reflection on the museum’s collection and its historical development. The exhibition does not aim for a nostalgic projection of the past. Rather, it is an inquiry into the visions, utopias, and possibilities of art (and freedom) in post-apocalyptic societies and social systems.
Artists‘ books, that is, artworks in book form, have a long tradition in Europe, dating back to the 18th century. Nevertheless, it was only the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century, particularly Dadaism and Surrealism, with their text-image experiments, that laid the foundation for the equal value of various artistic disciplines and forms of expression involved in the conception and production of artists‘ books, primarily literature and visual arts. Since the 1960s, artists‘ books have been produced as unique items or in limited editions and have been fully recognized as an independent art form.
The bibliophile book experienced a high culture in the GDR. The exhibition „The Days Were Numbered,“ however, does not focus on illustrated literature but rather centers on artists‘ books and journals that open up their own aesthetic and discursive spaces, thereby understanding the book form as a possibility for an object-like, almost utopian space. Published in small or very small editions, mostly by the artists themselves or even produced as unique items, these books and journals often emerged on the fringes of the so-called official art scene in the GDR, in diverse, far-reaching, and nationwide networked niches.
However, it wasn’t only in the arts that handcrafted self-published works gained significance as a socially relevant medium during this period. Opposition groups, often organized through church circles, advocating for environmental protection, equality, human rights, and peace, made use of so-called samizdat publications—self-published works produced without state control. Although the exhibition „The Days Were Numbered“ explicitly focuses on artistic publication formats, the distinction between artistic and activist practices is deliberately blurred. This is because many artists were involved in opposition circles and/or, in some cases, understood their own artistic work as critical socio-political action.
Often produced without authorization, some self-published artists‘ books and magazines, or rather those involved in them, walked a tightrope. At times, the boundaries between official and unofficial, conformist and nonconformist, were blurred or even rendered absurd. Neither particularly interested in the content nor the form of the state’s (cultural) policy criteria, artists and other cultural workers in the late GDR carved out spaces for themselves to shape them with attitudes, artistic work, and networks, creating counter-models to everyday (political) reality in an almost utopian sense.
This action was not always motivated by an explicit stance against the state. The basis was usually „not being for it,“ but knowing how systems and opportunities could be used to create their own space for freedom. The formation of groups united by shared interests was also essential. The politically charged term „collective“ was rarely used. These group formations were motivated, on the one hand, by shared thinking, action, and networking, and on the other hand, by a high degree of individual development. The community was very explicitly understood as a structurally existential unit of reference for the individual.
Sometimes against the so-called norm, parallel to it, or just outside of it, subverting it and generally critically questioning it, spaces and freedoms have emerged within and through art. Books, in particular, are predestined for this. The idea of carrying a book around, thus establishing a very direct connection to one’s own space and body, is inherent in the concept of a book.
The exhibition therefore focuses on real or symbolic forms of the book as autonomous, self-contained projects, inherently possessing the character of portable, distributable, individually and collectively accessible „exhibitions.“ Crucially, this involves the interplay between individual artistic work and community-building and community-based creation. An important aspect of our consideration is that of the book or magazine, understood as a medium for micro-designs of the world and freedom between disciplines, as a symbolic transcendence of boundaries.
In various chapters, both formal-aesthetic and thematic concepts and productions are presented in retrospect from today’s perspective. In addition to the publications themselves, artworks are on display that are either associated with the publications, meaning they originated within a related discourse. Most of the graphics, photographs, paintings, drawings, etc., presented on the walls are loose collections of sheets included with the books and magazines, which have now been temporarily removed.
The Days Were Numbered consists of the following chapters:
M1: Loud Voices of Silence – City and Nature as Social Spaces of Existence
M2: The Other Collectives – Parallel Spaces of Thought and Transgressions of Boundaries
M3: The Other Collectives – Conceptual and Experimental Images
S1: Spaces of Word, Language, and Color
S2: Breaks – Word Images / Image Words
S3: Unaulutu. Pebbles in the Sand
A Loud Voice of Silence
City and Nature as Social Spaces
At the heart of this section of the exhibition are artists‘ journals and books that addressed questions about the design of spaces for human existence and their conditions. Texts and images expressed sometimes vehement criticism of the existing conditions and the state of cities and natural spaces. However, the focus on cities as spaces of social resonance and discourse, and on nature/landscape as living space, was not simply on the observed dysfunctionality; rather, poetic imaginings were used to develop counter-designs to the reality of the time. Here, urban space is addressed as the interface between private and public space, and the inviolability of the individual sphere is demanded. In both texts and images, this section of the exhibition features a striking number of walls, facades, fences, doors, and corridors. Starting from those subjects that represent boundaries of different kinds and functions, the artistic reflections are not only characterized by linguistic or visual descriptions of those boundaries. Rather, imagined transgressions of boundaries and ideas of unconditional freedom (of the individual) permeate the artists‘ books and journals.
Nature and landscape, on the other hand, are often perceived in their destruction. Environmental pollution had also reached devastating proportions in the late GDR. Poisoned waters, dying forests, and the heavy pollution of air and soil were the result of overexploitation, inadequate environmental protection, and a constantly growing demand for resources. Especially in the 1980s, this environmental destruction became a topic for opposition groups and accordingly found its way into artistic works, particularly niche productions such as artists‘ books.
The other collectives
Parallel spaces of thought and transgressions of boundaries / Conceptual and experimental images
At the heart of the chapter Parallel spaces of thought and transgressions of boundaries in Exhibition Space M2 are two differently conceived publications: on the one hand, the Berlin-based artist’s magazine „Schaden,“ and on the other hand, the Dresden-based series of booklets „Poe-sie All Bum / Poe-sie All Peng / Dolorosa überhaupt.“
While „Schaden,“ in his visionary interweaving of disciplines and forms of expression, above all the visual arts and literature, also sought to build a bridge between theory and practice, the booklets „Poe-sie All Bum / Poe-sie All Peng / Dolorosa überhaupt“ opened up a special image/text space that arose exclusively from the interplay of painting and literature.
However, alongside texts and images, this chapter also repeatedly focuses on thematic aspects that are symptomatic of the artistic output of the late GDR. Symbolic transgressions are inscribed in word and image play on the theme of flying: namely, when flight becomes an attempt at flight, an attempt at escape, but also flying debris, and when, in photographs and prints, the human body is transformed by billowing cloths, long exposure times make arms appear to take flight, turning them into wings, or when double doors flap in the wind. The imaginative or, alternatively, fictional notion of taking off, which also always contains the possibility of failure, runs through many of the chapter’s texts and images in an extremely poetic, sometimes ironic or self-ironic way.
The question of visual languages is repeatedly raised in the chapter Conceptual and experimental images in M3. A particular focus is placed on photography, which fits poorly into the then-widespread, classic auteur photography of social documentary. Rather, in marginal, self-published publications, consciously conceptual and experimental visual languages were tested and postulated as a valid means of expressing a critical view of reality. Furthermore, publications are presented that, in drawings or printing processes, especially screen printing, clearly borrow from and reference popular media such as comics or narrative forms and themes of Pop Art. In addition, the chapter dedicates a section to a thematic aspect: texts and images are devoted to the human, mostly naked, body and, in the broadest sense, ideas of love. Sometimes this love is immense, at times even violent, and often bittersweet, but the existential struggle for that emotional and psychological state of transcending the boundaries of the self is always at its core. The promise associated with love—or at least the hope for it—is the formation of a microcosm of individuals who, despite all their potential internal conflicts, seem to assert themselves against the world.
Word, language, and color spaces
Caesuras – Word images / Image words
The exhibition chapter Word, language, and color spaces in S1 focuses on book forms, some in installation form, that open (or sometimes close) spaces through language and text. It also presents books that are often completely without text, but instead create their effect through abstract images, their materiality, and above all, color.
Within the publications of the chapter Caesuras – Word images / Image words in S2, gaps, absences, and formal reductions are created. The seemingly radical rigor of the visual concepts is often permeated by a poetry that emerges in a special way in the space between black and white. In addition to specific books by individual artists or artist duos that were begun shortly before the collapse of the GDR, but mostly completed one to two years later, this exhibition chapter also features specific book and magazine series.
This includes „Ariadnefabrik, “ an alternative literary magazine that was published in East Berlin from 1986 to 1989. Also on display are issues of the art magazine „Entwerter/Oder, “ which is still published today. This publication was one of the first magazines of its kind in the GDR in 1982.
Unaulutu. Pebbles in the Sand (Steinchen im Sand)
Frieder Heinze, Olaf Wegewitz
The exhibition space is dedicated to a single book: „Unaulutu. Pebbles in the Sand“ by Frieder Heinze and Olaf Wegewitz. Original prints in various printing techniques, as well as hand drawings, texts, and illustrations from a historical sketchbook. The latter is based on the expedition records of a journey undertaken by the Leipzig ethnologist Fritz Krause. The researcher’s sketchbook was created in 1908 during an expedition to the indigenous Karajá people in central Brazil. This sketchbook served as a starting point for the artists to engage intensively with (non-European) myths and archaic sign systems for social orders and communication beyond language. This exploration is rooted in the tradition of the Primitivism of Classical Modernism, whose socio-critical component gained controversial urgency in the GDR.
Materials derived from nature, various papers, occasional acoustic elements, and an elaborate binding that allows the large prints to be unfolded and removed make the book an experience.
For the first time, „Unaulutu. Pebbles in the Sand“ is now being presented in an installation version within the space.
However, the artist’s book „Unaulutu. Pebbles in the Sand“ also occupies a special position in the book art of the GDR beyond its elaborate production: The 130 copies of the work were handcrafted with considerable financial and organizational effort and published in 1986 by Reclam Leipzig with the help of the West Berlin gallery Brusberg.
It was unusual for an official publishing house to undertake such a book project with young artists who were not yet established in the GDR public sphere, especially since they were simultaneously involved in the 1st Leipzig Autumn Salon, which was classified as counter-revolutionary.