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frieze (London), Nr. 71, November 2002
Tornitz & Werkleitz: 5th Werkleitz Biennial 'Zugewinngemeinschaft'
von Jan Verwoert
The Werkleitz society was founded in 1993 when a group of film students
settled in the village of Werkleitz in the East German state of Sachsen
Anhalt. They realized an extensive interdisciplinary exhibition in the
same year. Since 1996 this exhibition has become a biennial, this year's
installment being the fourth in the series. The event lasted for five
days during which works were presented in public spaces in Werkleitz and
the nearby Tornitz as well as in temporary venues ranging from a gym to
the local civic center. The village pub was turned into a cinema in
which a documentary film program was presented parallel to the exhibition.
In the field of art practices based on cultural research and
documentation the Werkleitz biennial has probably been one of the most
interesting and most thoughtfully curated exhibitions in Germany this
year. The concept of the biennial was to contrast the historic spirit of
internationalism inherent in the socialist utopia of the GDR with the
restrictive immigration policy of the reunited Germany. A policy
designed to limit migration to skilled professionals who add to the
growth of the national economy (a rationale alluded to by the
biennnial's ambigous title 'Zugewinngemeinschaft': Community of
Surplus). To make this concept tangible the curatorial team defined
three symbolic points of departure for the exhibition: the X.World
Festival of Youths and Students in East Berlin in 1973, the film Whity
(1970) by Fassbinder (screened in the film programm) and the
interpretable statement Open frontiers? The invited artists were
supplied with a collection of reference materials and asked to
contribute to this historical and political discourse.
Not all of the works in the show explicity engaged with the thematic
guideline. Those that did, however, turned out to be highly intriguing.
Ina Rossow for instance compiled an archive with photos, video- and
audio-material from the X.World Festival including a stunning photo of
guest speaker Angela Davies on a podium next to the uptight bespectacled
socialist head of the state Erich Honecker. The installation documented
how the youth flooding the city took the promise of internalionalism
much more literally than the state intended and created a socialist
Woodstock. A reassesment of GDR culture was also proposed by other
works: Henrik Olesen screened amateur films by an East Berlin gay group
from the 70ies with hilarous voice-overs that camped up the official
socialist jargon. Johanna and Helmut Kandl presented the installtion Auf
der Insel Bella Lella (2002), a collection of old holiday-snapshots by
citizens from the FRG and the GDR. The fact that photos from the beaches
of Spain or Yugoslawia show the same smiling faces somewhat destabilizes
the western myth that life was dull behind the iron curtain.
The installation nach Olympia (2000-02) by Wiebke Grösch and Frank
Metzger displayed photos and texts that portraied the fate of olympic
villages after the games. Quite regularly they become social ghettos. In
Lake Placid the athletes' appartments are even used as a prison. The
video installation Leben in Deutschland - mein Nachbar ist Deutscher
also presents the 'camp' as the flipside of the 'global village'.
African immigrants from the nearby refugee camp were invited to
videotape statements about their living conditions. Their work exposed
the state policy of isolating asylum seekers in camps in the middle of
nowhere. Many of the comments, however, stressed hope, humour and
partying as ways to fight depression and to refute the stigmatization as
'dispensable aliens' by the political right or as 'pitiable victims' by
the political left.
Naturally, the exchange between the local residents and the visiting art
crowd mainly amounted to mutual voyeurism. A symptom of the obvious
contradictions inherent in the staging of a left wing intellectual
discourse on global politics in this rural context. Previous biennials
sought to bridge this gap by iniating more community based art projects.
To criticize the relative lack of such endeavours in this year's
installment, however, would seem rather philistine. First of all, the
very existence of the biennial gives evidence to its local acceptance as
it wouldn't be possible without long term support by the community.
Moreover, the strength of the biennial might lie in the displacement it
affects by taking politics out of parliament and art out of the museum
to bring them together in one of the most unlikely places: Werkleitz.
Rather than a feigned harmonic reconciliation of art and the social the
aknowledgment or even intensification of obvious discrepancies might be
much more apt to touch today's political realities.
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