Alternative Exhibition Activity in the GDR between 1970 and 1989
In the year 1971, Erich Honecker came to power, and the Ulbricht era was over. New opportunities for freedom arose within the art world, openings that had been completely inconceivable up until this point in time. Artists and actors in the cultural sector began to try out new forms of presentation and/or articulation that were not entirely in keeping with Social Realism. In doing so, they continually invoked Erich Honecker’s words at the VIIIth party congress in June 1971, where he encouraged “scope and diversity” in the cultural policy of the GDR. In December 1971, at the 4th plenum of the SED Central Committee, Honecker made the following statement: “If one starts out from the strong positions of socialism, there can be […] no taboos in the field of art and literature.”[1]
The lowest common denominator of intentions and motivations of the various art initiatives that strove to avoid official control in the GDR, was an attempt to visually break up a social communication deficit rooted in the dictates of thought and opinion caused primarily by SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) propaganda, which pervaded everyday life. Since the mid-1970s, this communication deficit was accompanied by an activity gridlock; however, this could be resolved by temporarily transforming the private sphere into public meeting places. In individual living environments, a voice was given to thoughts, and questions generally avoided, or even taboo, gained visual expression. It often began with the idea of “showing friends what you liked yourself, things that concerned or moved you.”[2] Themes for which there was neither a place nor understanding in the public space, were made negotiable in a semi-impermeable way through the creation of internal structures of publicity.
In this way, art or the presentation of art became an occasion for establishing spaces where ideas could be articulated. Art in the private space functioned as a communicative alternative framework that had nothing to do with a bourgeois need for representation. It was concerned neither with an auratically charged approach to art, nor with exhibiting as a means of distinction. An exhibition in a private location provided the opportunity for discussion; a more speculative way of viewing the works on show led to new topics, and commercial aspects played no role whatsoever. Exhibitions in private spaces thus became spaces for negotiation not only of art itself but also in relation to society.
In compliance with party orders, public institutions such as museums and galleries were expected to contribute towards the “development of the socialist personality.” This resulted in uniformity of thought through determinacy, along with a deepening separation between the sate’s didactic requirements and everyday reality. While the cultural functionaries saw art as an opportunity for ideological education, the members of such artist groups as Clara Mosch from Karl-Marx-Stadt tried to evade such instrumentalizations. In many cases, the non-conformist artists dealt with everyday life in the GDR, especially with those of the authorities with all their guidelines, approval regulations and procedures, with the aim of making the everyday absurdities visible.
Transitions from public to private space appeared to be fluid, but this was not the case the other way round: things shown in the private environment were considered by the state security to be “negative/hostile”, and seldom made their way into the public sphere. One extremely significant exception for the art history of the GDR was the unconventional collaboration between the state-run Arkade Gallery and the EP Gallery between 1975 and 1980. On several occasions, Klaus Werner, the director of Arkade Gallery invited the private gallery owner Jürgen Schweinebraden to write about artists who he presented; they passed the ball to one another bringing together artists from East and West. The existence of other small galleries within the network of the Kulturbund allowed for a certain amount of scope – in 1989, more than 400 of them were strewn across the country (link to On strategies of refusal). However, a gallery like the Arkade in Berlin, which opened its doors to officially marginalized art and presented it as part of its program, was destined to collide with state structures, even more so the private EP Gallery run by Jürgen Schweinebraden, who was criminalized and forced to flee the country in 1980, faced with the threat of punishment. Initiatives of this kind were not only monitored by the state security but also – if they were assessed as being subversive – dealt with operatively, undermined and liquidated, often in conjunction with local authorities and state institutions. State repression could also be seen as a driving force behind artistic production – having a recognizable influence on aesthetic positions and artistic practice in the case of the artist Gabriele Stötzer.
Nevertheless, by the end of Walter Ulbricht’s post-Stalinist era, the ideologically grounded educational corset of everyday cultural life in the GDR was loosened, dented and stretched at the seams. The artists of Clara Mosch from Karl-Marx-Stadt appeared on various occasions in East Berlin, in particular through the mediation of the art historian Klaus Werner. He had ensured that they were presented in the Berlin National Gallery in 1976 under the title Neuerdings Karl-Marx-Stadt. Werner also organized several exhibitions with the Clara Mosch artists in his own gallery Arkade in Berlin.[3] The members of the Clara Mosch group were closely connected in the art scene in Karl-Marx-Stadt. They regularly attended the events in the Pablo Neruda Intelligence Club, and Michael Morgner and Thomas Ranft were also active on the board of the Oben Gallery in addition to their work at Clara Mosch. Most visitors to these galleries knew one another from other meeting places such as the student club “Marta”, the theatre club “Fuchsbau”, the “Club der Intelligenz Pablo Neruda” or the annual summer festival organized by the church parish of the “St. Pauli-Kreuz”. These spaces were all attached to an institution, so as such they could not be classified as public.
In reality, however, they fulfilled precisely this function. The various locations and actions were connected through a form of social behavior that was self-evident to the people who belonged to this scene, with peer sharing and word of mouth at its core. A dynamic internal fabric of social communication introduced certain themes to the educational mission of state-run galleries, focusing on and questioning the control system itself. By acting in ‘other spaces’, i.e. in spaces that actually had a completely different function, the prevailing cultural policy was called into question, as the activity took place outside of the established control structure.
The public attention gained in this way ultimately contributed significantly to enforcing the establishment of the self-organized gallery against the state authorities.
A review of the most important private initiatives between 1970 and 1989 reveals that the exhibition of art was flanked by a heterogeneous range of unofficial cultural mediation possibilities that ignored or consciously inverted the customary divisions between sectors of art production made within the official art scene. One example can be found in the painter Hartwig Ebersbach’s collaboration with the group Neue Musik Hans Eisler (see Missa Nigra performances) and his participation in the actions of Leipzig Group 37.2. This group was founded by the painter Hans Schulze, who had studied at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig in Hartwig Ebersbach’s class, and was the first graduate to receive a diploma for a theoretical work. His approach was based on the teachings of Karl Marx and contemporary left-wing philosophers. Between 1982 and 1984, the group performed several actions in a creative interaction between painters, musicians, dancers and poets.[4] They understood reflections on their working processes and the participation of the public as an integral part of the program.
Another example of alternative art presentation is the 1. Leipziger Herbstsalon, held in 1984. The artists, who had come together to organized this large-scale event, had first dared an attempt at breaking away from state supervision 10 years previously, with their project Tangente. Yet, they failed several times, due to the refusal of cultural officials to open up exhibition space for forms of intermedia expression. The first success in this area was the exhibition Intermedia I, which was realized in Coswig in 1985. In cooperation with the leader of the local clubhouse, the organizers Christoph Tannert and Micha Kapinos arranged a show featuring painters, musicians, musicians, filmmakers, performers and dancers performing together. There was no Intermedia II; the clubhouse leader was ruled out of the SED and forbidden to continue his career because the event was seen as having violated the “principles of socialist cultural policy”.[5] In all of the above examples, the actors themselves organized the events, which were held in public spaces.
Studio cinemas in e.g. Leipzig, Karl-Marx-Stadt and Berlin drew attention to cinematic art from Poland, Hungary, the CSSR and the USSR. Although it is often forgotten from today’s point of view, these films provided a source of inspiration that considerably influenced the aesthetic individualism of young artists in the GDR. Film clubs with independent film screenings were established in smaller towns. One example is the film club organized by Ulrich Polster, who is now an established video artist. In the mid-1980s, he showed films loaned from the Hungarian or Polish Institute in the market town of Hainichen in Saxony.[5]
Social life in the GDR was often described as a “niche society”, but our observations of the background described here point more towards a fabric of circles of activity: sometimes they touched one another peripherally, sometimes merged, often formed independently of one another and then disappeared. This process lead to the development of a network to which all the various actors felt they belonged. Their open-mindedness to experimentation, to unknown forms of performance or exhibition, arose from a necessity to remain flexible, as spontaneous decisions and activities had a far greater chance of avoiding the control of officials and Stasi (secret police) informers. Word of mouth replaced printed programs. An opening could have taken the form of a reading – or an informal meeting, happening, performance, auction, film screening, song recital, etc.
This practice reflects the emancipatory strategies of artists, especially those who belonged to the younger generation. They consciously resorted to techniques of creative expression they did not master, or if so only in an amateurish way. In this way, they were able to distance themselves from anything that was allowed or supported by official cultural policy. From the 1980s at the latest, young artists from the subculture scene hardly cared about social integration, but rather relied on autonomous spaces of action from the beginning. Even established painters and graphic artists, who were organized within the Verband Bildender Künstler (artists’ association of the GDR), increasingly pursued their own modes of presentation and communication. Between 1975 and 1987, numerous Plein Air art events took place in the GDR, usually in remote locations and with no public notification. These gatherings, generally organized and accompanied by the art historian Klaus Werner, were “collective events brimming with spontaneity”[6] outside of the boundaries of state-controlled space, they were a think tank and a source of inspiration rolled into one. The focus was not on nature studies, as the name might suggest: “Landscape was only an offer that was made, a background or a medium.”[7] Instead, “ideas were cooked up for the provocations kindled in Karl-Marx-Stadt and elsewhere.”[8] Without this informal backcloth, the dynamic programming of an institution like Gallery Oben would have been inconceivable.
Many of the Kulturbund galleries functioned as hubs for informal actions. This particularly applies to Gallery Oben: motifs, contents, intentions and ideas were not treated in a hierarchical way, and a kind of temporary public sphere was created. This kind of public sphere became more and more evident in the everyday life of the GDR, and was made visible in artistic presentations.
These temporary, semi-public and hybrid spaces were held together and productively maintained by artists who did not consider the regular exhibition channels to be an adequate platform for their possibilities of expression. This becomes programmatically evident in the work of the Eigen+Art Gallery (link).Even if the expression “strategic dilettantism” did not yet exist at the time, there was certainly a distinct awareness of its mechanisms. The exploration of hybrid forms of action and interdisciplinary interactions was possible, especially in the subculture scene, or as a part of initiatives that were not directly subject to state control. However, due to the restrictive measures of the authorities and the Ministry for State Security, any attempt to establish these forms of action was bound to fail, but each time a new form was tried out, new potential was generated.
[1] Cf. Doris Liebermann, Ein Piratenstück. Der 1. Leipziger Herbstsalon 1984, seine Vorgeschichte und seine Protagonisten [A Pirate Piece: The 1st Leipzig Herbstsalon in 1984, its Prehistory and its Protagonists], (Mitteldeutscher Verlag Halle: 2015), 37. She took Honecker’s original words from the book by Manfred Jäger, Kultur und Politik in der DDR 1945-1990 [Culture and Politics in the GDR 1945-1990] (Cologne: 1994), 140.
[2] Cf. Yvonne Fiedler, “Revolution in aller Öffentlichkeit”, in Tely Büchner, et al. (ed.), Zwischen Ausstieg und Aktion, (Erfurt: 2013), 73.
[3] Carlfriedrich Claus had a solo exhibition in Galerie Arkade in 1975, Michael Morgner in 1976, Dagmar Ranft-Schinke in 1977, Thomas Ranft and Gregor Torsten Schade in 1979.
[4] Under his real name Christian Heckel, the author of the text [Radjo Monk] participated in an action at the “Otto Nagel” cultural center in Halle in 1984.
[5] In the Leipzig Studio Cinema “Casino”, which existed from 1913 until 1993, Fred Gehler (who later became the director of the well-known documentary festival in Leipzig after 1990) introduced films by Krysztof Zanussi, Márta Mészáros, Jiří Menzel, Andrzej Wajda, István Szabó, Andrej Tarkowski and others to the audience.
[6] Cf. Gunar Barthel at: http://www.barthel-tetzner.de/shop_content.php?coID=31 (25.10.2016)
[7] Cf. Klaus Werner: at: http://www.barthel-tetzner.de/shop_content.php?coID=31 (25.10.2016).
[8] Ibid. Gunar Barthel.