19 November 2019 press release

“Disruptive elements. Art, protest an the end of the GDR“ // Exhibition at the German Museum of Books and Writing of the National Library in Leipzig // 29 November 2019 to 26 July 2020

Exhibition opening: 28 November 2019, 19:30

This exhibition takes the thirtieth anniversary of the protests in autumn 1989 as the occasion to present artist’s magazines, mail art projects, and even punk concerts that reveal not only the creative diversity and joy in experimentation, but also the arrogant and destructive incursions by the State Security Service into the art scene. The temporary exhibition of the German Museum of Books and Writing was created in collaboration with the German Music Archive of the German National Library and in cooperation with the Institute of Musicology at the University of Leipzig. The exhibition opening is on Thursday, 28 November 2019, 19:30.

Following Wolf Biermann’s expatriation in 1976, the resulting protests mounted by intellectuals and the harsh clamp down by the state, the GDR witnessed its first major wave of departures: by 1983, over 40,000 people had left the country. At the same time, large numbers of artists who remained in the GDR withdrew from the official art scene in their disappointment at the state’s cultural policies.

Artists, intellectuals and also youngsters embarked on a search for free zones, and developed alternative ways of living and new possibilities for creative work: they occupied empty flats and factories and used them as studios or rehearsal rooms, or turned into autonomously run locations for a “breakaway audience”. Consequently, a large number of concerts and readings were held in private settings, while simultaneously official venues such as culture centres were “infiltrated” and used by the alternative scene for exhibitions and performances.

One major focus of the exhibition are the artist magazines from the museum’s collection, which were created and distributed as forms of “samizdat”, small print runs self-published outside the confines of the GDR’s censorship apparatus. Artistic mail-art projects – postcards as “windows to the world” – were another alternative to the official cultural sector and its regimented stipulations. Exhibition posters, original documents and photographs of locations in Leipzig are used to present a self-determined “second public sphere” in which cultural stakeholders carried out intermedial projects and readings together with authors critical of the system. Various musical trends such as experimental compositions, the free jazz festival in Peitz, street music, punk concerts within the youth subculture and the various relationships between the different stakeholders demonstrate the musical aspect of art and protest in the final decade of the GDR.

Disruptive elements. Art, protest and the end of the GDR

Exhibition at the German Museum of Books and Writing of the German National Library in Leipzig
29 November 2019 to 26 July 2020
Tuesday to Sunday 10:00–18:00, Thursday 10:00–20:00
Public holidays (except Mondays) 10:00–18:00
Admission is free.

Exhibition opening: 28 November 2019, 19:30

Michael Fernau, director of the German National Library in Leipzig
Dr. Stephanie Jacobs, director of the German Museum of Books and Writing
Dr. Paul Kaiser, Dresdner Institut für Kulturstudien: »Wutanfälle und Flugversuche. Eine Topografie der Leipziger Gegenkultur (in den 1980er Jahren) zwischen Revolte und Gegendruck«
Music: Robert Lucaciu (contrabass) and Philipp Scholz (drums)

Followed by a curator’s tour with Julia Rinck and Ruprecht Langer

Background

The book has shaped our culture and civilisation like no other medium. For centuries our knowledge about the world and its peoples has been stored in books. The task of the German Book and Writing Museum of the German National Library is to collect, exhibit and process evidence of book and media history. Founded in 1884 in Leipzig as the Deutsches Buchgewerbemuseum (German Book Trade Museum), it is the oldest museum in the world in the field of book culture, and also one of the most important with regard to the scope and quality of its holdings.

Contact

Images for editorial use

Press image material is only available in German.