Against the Line or the Danced Rage

Punk/Rock in the late GDR

24/05/—17/08/25

 

Tina Bara, Christiane Eisler, Clemens Gröszer, Peter Gruchot, Chris Hinze, Charlie Köckritz, Sven Marquart, Peter Oehlmann, Helga Paris, Gerd Rattei, Donald Saischowa, Daniel Sambo-Richter, Karin Wieckhorst

feat. flüstern & SCHREIEN, Sandow, WK13, Tapetopia

 

The cabinet exhibition provides a snapshot of specific forms of youth culture during the last decade of the GDR. The focus is on various transdisciplinary scenes and attitudes that played a key role in the formation of networks and communities during this time and which demonstrated a (critical) distance from state-imposed norms.

 

Exhibits of various kinds are on display: film and photographic documentation, as well as art. The latter can be divided into two categories: on the one hand, the first artistic forays of young cultural workers from Cottbus who were part of the scene. Their works embody the zeitgeist of the 1980s and simultaneously testify to the creative energy at the interface between visual art, music, and rebellious (youth) cultures.

 

On the other hand, works by already established artists, most of whom also belonged to a different generation, represent outside perspectives on marginalized youth cultures.

 

The documentary aspect of the exhibition, which focuses primarily on the Cottbus bands WK13 and Sandow and their environment, reveals certain areas of tension: The documentation often testifies to borderlines between what was permitted, what was allowed, and what was (strictly) forbidden. On the one hand, copying flyers, posters, etc. was prohibited; on the other, the bands were involved in DEFA and Amiga productions (although some song lyrics had to be changed).

 

In a variety of ways, the exhibition also reveals clear references to developments in art and cultural history. Thus, the work of artists of all disciplines during this period is often influenced by the attitude to life, poetry, and imagery of Expressionist and Dadaist attitudes. From aesthetically pleasing apocalyptic moods to bitingly sarcastic criticisms of politics and society, to perceptual experiments of seemingly grotesque everyday realities, as well as notions of art as an anti-bourgeois habitat, one can find connections between the avant-garde of the early 20th century and the parallel/subcultures of the 1980s in the GDR.

 

Against the Line or the Danced Rage makes it understandable how a generation of young people vehemently – and above all publicly – resisted rigid social rules and state value systems. At the same time, however, the fractures and gray areas of an ever-disintegrating state system are also made clear.

 

The exhibition does not aim to depict or re-enact a comprehensive history of youth cultures. Rather, the presentation seeks to create a historical and aesthetic space for memory and narrative through a historicizing combination of art and documents.