Broadcast from the counter-space
Mail art, posters and folding blinds from alternative GDR art scenes
24/05/—24/08/25
„Here a clear counter-revolutionary avant-garde and there the state artists—there was never a clear separation. There were always bridges and walkways that people cheerfully crossed back and forth, more from one, less from the other.“ (Lutz Dammbeck, 1996)
A more or less consensus has now developed within art historians regarding the permeability of the official and unofficial art and cultural scenes of the GDR. The „scene“ in the singular has been shelved in favor of the in-depth study of artistic groups and individual figures in a loose network that had developed during the last decade of the GDR’s existence in Leipzig, Berlin, Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt, and Halle, as well as in Erfurt, Jena, and Cottbus.
The artistic communication and exchange media of the scenes at the center of this exhibition were also, in a sense, Janus-faced: Event and exhibition posters, originally intended to appeal to the largest possible audience in urban outdoor spaces in large print runs, were now produced in their original graphic design in very small editions without printing permission. Sometimes self-printed and commissioned, they often became collector’s items, marking a sense of belonging in homes and helping the galleries—as practiced by EIGEN+ART, for example—generate essential income. The graphic vocabulary of these posters is primarily characterized by the individual artistic style of their creators: A consistent corporate identity of the various exhibition venues is almost never found; indeed, the powerful visual space sometimes disrupts the secure, textual transmission of information.
A rare example of a cross-city merger of these subcultural, semi- to official milieus was the 1985 festival „Intermedia I: Klangbild / Farbklang“ at the Coswig Cultural Center near Dresden, where painted Roman blinds formed the dazzling backdrops for punk concerts and performance art. These had previously been sent by curators Micha Kapinos and Christoph Tannert to over 40 artists with a request for their artwork. The phenomenon of „Rollo-Kunst“ (roller blind art) continued in Lusatia, where it was first exhibited in 1986 in the rooms of the Cottbus Castle Church.
Postal networks, however, were not only used for the mailing of roller blinds; from the 1970s onwards, creative mail artists developed them into an independent art form. Envelopes, stationery, postcards, stamps, and even rubber stamps were artistically modified. Although the GDR’s mail art scene was relatively small, it played a particularly important role as a self-proclaimed, autonomous, and subversive „art space.“
The exhibition will feature works by prominent protagonists of these temporary „counter-spaces“ in Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Cottbus, and Karl-Marx-Stadt, as well as outside the GDR, which can be considered exemplary or unique for the artistic forms of communication of this scene(s) in the 1980s.
TELEPHONE ART
„Telephone art is an idea born out of necessity during the GDR era. Otto Sander Tischbein and I discovered a way of artistic communication outside of state control. Today, although the possibilities of telecommunications have developed to such an extent that they exceed all imagination, it is still possible to use telephone art as an extension of our concept of art.
The principle is initially quite simple: You make an appointment. The phone rings. Both partners answer, each with drawing materials in front of them. Now you can agree on a theme and create the same drawing in mutual conversation, but each partner is a completely different artist. One doesn’t know how the other will process the shared theme. The real attraction comes at the end, when both drawings are exhibited together.
The experience is even more intense when tape recordings of the conversations are made. It is a special way for the artist to make contact and expand the familiar structures that trigger associations, because one automatically draws on the other’s intellectual world of experience. A special attraction arises. It also happens when it’s organized as a public performance in front of an audience, where the audience can move from one artist to the other, but the two artists themselves are unaware of each other’s actions. Numerous variations of the medium are also possible. For example, the artist dictates a picture verbally without seeing it themselves, but the audience experiences the performance up close – the surprise for the speaker is then great. It’s Homo Ludens ex tempore.“
Veit Hofmann
INTERMEDIA I [1985, Coswig near Dresden]
Program sequence according to the invitation card designed by Wolfgang A. Scheffler:
June 1st
HERAKLES Media Collage [by Lutz Dammbeck]
With Fine Kwiatkowski, Hans-Jürgen Noack, Lothar Fiedler,
Gottfried Rößler, Dietrich Oltmanns
KLICK & OUT „AIDS DELICATE“
With Sala Seil, Evolinum, Tohm die Roes, Pjötr Schwert, ToRo Klick
Pfff…
Hans-Joachim Schulze, Frank Zappe, Jürgen Gutjahr
PAINT DRESS
Kerstin Roßbander, Michael Freudenberg
HARD POP
Stephan Hachtmann, Armin Bautz, Ralf Lepsch, and others
June 2nd
RENNBANDBAND * OTZE (Painting with Music) Andreas Hegewald, Lutz Peter Naumann, Claudia Böttner,
Klaus Werner et al. + Jörg Sonntag, Christiane Just, Bodo Münzner, Michael Hengst (Painting Action)
DANCE AND PROJECTION Christine Schlegel, Fine Kwiatkoswki, Gabi Kachold, Stefan Schilling, Matthias Schneider, Jens Tuckindorf
POTATO PEELER
Klaus Hähner-Springmühl, Gitte Springmühl, Frank Raßbach
MUSIC BRIGADE – HANNE WANDTKE
Hanne Wandtke, Hans-Jürgen Noack, Lothar Fiedler,
Gottfried Rössler
OTZE
Tom Trietschel, Rene Bestvater, Uwe J., Aldo Scheck
Pleated blind paintings for Intermedia I presented by:
Paul Böckelmann, Dietrich Brüning, Lutz Dammbeck,
Klaus Elle, Tobias Ellmann, Steffen Fischer, Lutz Fleischer,
Michael Freudenberg, Hubertus Giebe, Klaus Hähner-Springmühl,
Angela Hampel, Andreas Hegewald, Johannes Heisig,
Michael Hengst, Veit Hofmann, Christiane Just, Petra Kasten, Katrin Krause, Michael Kunert, Michael Brendel, Andreas Küchler, Dieter Ladewig, Walter Libuda, Reinhard Sandner,
Wolfram A. Scheffler, Hans Scheuerecker, Christine Schlegel, Annette Schröter, Erasmus Schröter, Hans J. Schulze,
Frank Seidel, Wolfgang Smy, Jörg Sonntag, Matthias Stein,
Gudrun Trendafilov, Claus Weidensdorfer, Trak Wendisch,
Klaus Werner, Michael Wirkner, Dietmar Zaubitzer
Organization: Wolfgang Zimmermann
[Head of the Coswig Clubhouse]
Advisory: Michael Kapinos, Christoph Tannert [Festival curators]
EIGEN + ART, Leipzig
Before the EIGEN+ART gallery, which still operates internationally today, continued its vibrant exhibition work at its second location at Fritz-Austel-Straße 31 in Leipzig in 1985, the gallery’s founder, Gerd Harry Lybke, had already made his own attic apartment at Körnerplatz available for small exhibitions by friends and artists starting in 1983. The young gallery owner „Judy,“ who was said to have „an unparalleled talent for communication and navigation, at least by East German standards“ (Kaiser/Petzold, 1997), finally gave up his originally private retreat after 17 exhibitions, which had become too small and public, to establish an exhibition program in the former workshops of the Rohrer & Klinger company, a program that would soon attract national attention from the public and artists alike: „Everyone wanted to exhibit there, whether they were Looser or not (…), whether they were members of the association, whether they had studied or not“ (Lybke, 2009).
The previous rental of the space for studio use had been arranged through the association artist Akos Novaky. Accordingly, the illegal gallery project EIGEN+ART officially functioned as a workshop, open to the public at certain times, where they would always meet the (exhibiting) artists, who were ideally willing to provide information. The annual portfolios, published from 1986 onwards, featuring original graphic works by all artists, were considered a professional and sustainable form of gallery public relations. They were accompanied by continuous art-historical support from freelance art historians such as Christoph Tannert and Klaus Werner, and by the high standards of exhibition documentation via slides and video, which ultimately remained unique in the GDR. From the proceeds of the exhibition posters sold, which were freely designed by the artists without any specifications and usually produced in limited editions by the screen printer Hartmut Tauer without permission, the gallery owner was able to cover his expenses at the time, which “at that time amounted to only around 700 marks per exhibition” (Kaiser/Petzold, 1997).
The „Galerie oben“ and CLARA MOSCH in Karl-Marx-Stadt
The founding of the „Galerie oben“ in Karl-Marx-Stadt as a financially autonomous institution of the sales cooperative of visual artists dates back to 1973. On the occasion of its tenth anniversary, Hans Brockhage, sculptor and chairman of the cooperative, commented on the impetus behind the gallery’s founding:
„To surrender to the temptation of various opposing forces, to expose oneself to the tensions – to participate, in our own way. To produce patterns that would later be used as models, examples, or templates. […] Fragmented into a multitude of ‚quotations,‘ […] there was right from the beginning something like a spontaneous group consciousness, a common goal – something like a collective intuition.“
At the beginning of the 1980s, the „Galerie oben“ in Karl-Marx-Stadt and beyond the city limits actually developed through exhibitions and publications, as well as its weekly events („Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. Galerie oben“ was an established scene slogan), „into one of the centers of the avant-garde, which at that time was still largely living in the GDR,“ according to Gunar Barthel, gallery director from 1979 to 1987. Independence of content was maintained because the „board of directors, consisting of progressive artists, was able to dispose of funds itself [without a marathon approval process]“ (Barthel, 1990). Thomas Ranft, who designed the „Galerie oben“ logo, later became part of the circle of the CLARA MOSCH producer gallery, which was located on the outskirts of Karl-Marx-Stadt from 1977 to 1982. Its initiators and artists Carlfriedrich Claus, Thomas Ranft, Dagmar Ranft-Schinke, Michael Morgner and Gregor-Torsten Schade also came to show their own work there and to offer non-conformist artists an exhibition opportunity.
The 1st Leipzig Autumn Salon
The self-organized and curated exhibition of the „1st Leipzig Autumn Salon“ in 1984 went down in art history as a precedent and encouraging example for subsequent generations of artists in the GDR. For the six initiators and exhibiting artists of the „Autumn Salon,“ Lutz Dammbeck, Günter Firit, Hans-Hendrik Grimmling, Frieder Heinze, Günther Huniat, and Olaf Wegewitz, this „group exhibition, evaded by partisan tactics […] from state control and supervision“ (Dammbeck, 2012) was a brilliant conclusion to the multimedia exhibition project „Tangente,“ which had failed in 1976.
In the summer of 1984, the stylistically heterogeneous artists – all members of the Artists‘ Association, and thus by no means „fringe group painters“ (Kaiser/Petzold, 1997) – used a ruse to obtain a lease for a floor of the Leipzig Trade Fair Building. While the exhibition was still underway, the authorities had been informed of the event through the invitation cards that had already been sent out and attempted to stop it by terminating the lease and issuing an eviction notice. The six „Autumn Salonists,“ with legal advice and on-site support from numerous fellow artists and supporters from Karl-Marx-Stadt, Dresden, and Berlin, ultimately only formally agreed to the conditions set by the painter and high-ranking official of the Artists‘ Association, Bernhard Heisig: declaring the exhibition a „workshop,“ avoiding contact with the West or the press, and limiting the number of visitors. In fact, within just four weeks, almost ten thousand people saw the exhibition at the Leipzig Trade Fair Building.
Mail Art
The practice of adding well-intentioned illustrations to letters or postcards to please the recipient is probably as old as postal service itself. However, in the 1960s, mail was systematized as an art form by the artist Ray Johnson, who was living in New York at the time. Johnson established a mail network with other artist friends under the name „New York Correspondance School,“ through which he sent out calls for collaborative art projects. Often, the invited artists would work on a specific theme in an individual way and then forward it within the network. Even though mail art is as diverse and individual as its creators, it can be described using a few recurring core ideas:
Understanding Art Beyond Traditional Art Forms and their Institutions
Participants in a mail art network are not dependent on exhibition space from established state art institutions. Even though mail art is certainly presented in exhibitions, it was not primarily created for this purpose.
The artists are organized in networks
These are usually mailed address lists through which participants can contact each other.
Rejects the principle of a genius artist-subject
All participants within a network are equal, regardless of whether they are amateurs or professional artists.
Spontaneity and creativity as a fundamental principle of an alternative understanding of art
Mail art may seem banal at first glance. This is because it is usually less about technical perfection than about the creative or humorous use of the materials used.
Technical diversity
The techniques used vary depending on the artist. They can range from screen prints to homemade stamps, stickers, or stamps to collages made from magazines, photographs, packaging materials, or the like.
Mutual reference
Participants often use typical signatures such as symbols or slogans that are picked up by other artists and used in their own work. This establishes witty and recognizable codes within the scene.
The Leonhardi Museum in Dresden-Loschwitz
In 1963, the Leonhardi Museum, previously the studio of the Dresden painter Emil August Leonhardi (1826–1905), was revived as an exhibition space in accordance with the painter’s will. He had wished for it to continue to be used as a studio and exhibition space for young Dresden artists.
The more than 100 events and exhibitions that were to take place in the large hall until 1990 were distinguished by the fact that they were conceived and organized by an „active visual artist from the Dresden-East district“ or, more simply and less officially, by a working group known as the „Leonhardi Circle.“ It was a circle that guaranteed the „preservation of an artistic alternative“ and „in which no compliant functionaries or committee artists had the upper hand“ (Kaiser/Petzold, 1997).
Because the Leonhardi Museum was not a private and autonomous exhibition space, but a gallery of the state artists‘ association (VBK) and later of the Dresden East district, it was repeatedly closed and banned by the Ministry of State Security over the 25 years of its exhibition activity, which, according to Angelika Weißbach, only further increased the popularity of the museum.
The major group exhibitions at the end of the 1970s, such as „Kontraste“ and „Das Meer“ in 1978, and especially the three-part „Dezennien“ cycle, which began in the fall of 1979, received widespread resonance beyond the Elbe metropolis. The first, so-called „Türen“ exhibition, with its ambiguously interpretable objects and installations, escalated into an art scandal. Two participating artists were „recommended“ to leave by the rector of the university. Due to the participation of Ralf Winkler (A. R. Penck), who had been banned from exhibiting, the second part of the cycle was closed prematurely. The 1982 group exhibition „Breakfast in the Open Air“ was to become another high point in the curatorial and organizational work of the AG Leonhardi – before the „oppositional stronghold“ Leonhardi Museum was again closed until its reopening in 1986. The exhibited works, „with their vulgar directness and presence, were seen as a provocative response to the academic, mythologically disguised art in the ’salon‘ on the Brühl Terrace, entirely in the spirit of Manet,“ according to Bernd Rosner. The AG Leonhardi, which was re-established after the reopening in 1986, included, among others: Jürgen Wenzel, Jörg Sonntag and Andreas Küchler, was then also responsible for the later group projects, such as the five-day action project “ALLTAG – Fünf Tage für Elba” (11.–15.10.1989), whose actions consciously focused on the interaction between artist and audience and which were carried out primarily as a “spontaneous reaction to what was happening on the street” (Jörg Sonntag, 2006).
Mail Art in the spirit of Fluxus
„PURGE the world of bourgeois sickness, ‚intellectual‘, professional & commercialised culture, PURGE the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art, abstract art, illusionistic art, mathematical art, ‚PURGE THE WORLD OF EUROPANISM‘ … […] PROMOTE A REVOLUTIONARY FLOOD AND TIDE IN ART, Promote living art, anti-art, promote NON-ART REALITY to be grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes and professionals … […] FUSE the cadres of cultural & social & political revolutionaries into united front & action.“
George Maciunas – Fluxus Manifesto
This is stated in George Maciunas’s Fluxus Manifesto, published in 1963. Maciunas not only coined the term Fluxus, but also belonged to a circle of artists, primarily active in New York, who reimagined the relationship between humanity, art, and society. Fluxus was intended to be a movement against the elitism of the bourgeois art world, which clearly distinguished between artists and audiences and traded supposedly valuable individual works on the art market. Fluxus‘ anti-art, on the other hand, is not a style or genre, but rather a democratic and non-hierarchical approach to art. This was expressed concretely primarily in happenings—so-called concerts—in which the performers worked on their musical instruments with tools or simply sat motionless. Fluxus objects, which are usually made from everyday objects, invite participation, and have only a limited temporality, are also typical of the concept of anti-art in the Fluxus scene.
The 1960s and 1970s in particular represented a heyday for Fluxus, during which it advanced to become an international movement. In German-speaking countries, Joseph Beuys is arguably one of the most well-known figures in this scene. Beuys coined terms such as the „Extended Concept of Art“ and „Social Sculpture,“ which were largely based on the ideas of the New York Fluxus scene. For Beuys, humanity, politics, and art are part of a comprehensive trinity. Each person therefore possesses their own creativity, which allows them to create something new from what already exists. For Beuys, these new designs are both an artistic expression and political, as they introduce a new impulse into society. Through these small, creative contributions from many people, society, in Beuys‘ eyes, is modeled like a social sculpture.
Beuys was closely associated with the mail art scene in West Germany and East Germany and was an important figure and hub in the cross-border German-speaking mail art network. In addition, the democratic ideas in Beuys’s art concept were something that influenced some mail artists in the GDR, as evidenced by frequent references and homages to Beuys.
Mail Art in the GDR
One of the most important initiators of the mail art scene in the GDR is considered to be the artist Robert Rehfeldt, who was then based in Berlin. Rehfeldt had good contacts with artists in the mail art scenes of non-socialist states and, in the 1970s, began passing on address lists to fellow artists from his circle within the GDR.
Given the specific political situation in the GDR, mail art also played a special role there. Many artists in the GDR perceived it as a means of establishing contacts and friendships with like-minded people outside the real socialist sphere, despite limited travel options. Mail art could also be created from simple everyday materials that were widely available in the GDR. Furthermore, communication through codes and symbols offered a good opportunity to subversively target or satirize the political situation in the country. Topics such as peace, the environment, the insecure supply situation, and state censorship repeatedly became the subject of projects or individual works by various mail artists in the GDR.