| | | | | | | | | Heiko Vogler was part of the NVA (National People's Army), he worked for several years at the gas station; he now has his own company for machines and ideas for professional vehicle cleaning. | | | | | | Deutschland Übergestern | | | | Radical changes in the workplace after the turn | | | | 8 November 2019 – 3 January 2020 | | | | Opening: Thursday, 7 November, 7pm | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | Ernesto Milice. He came as Mozambican migrant when he was 17 to learn new skills and to work in the GDR. Mozambique became independent in 1975 of the colonial power of Portugal and had broken out into civil war. The socialist government sent the best of the country to befriend foreign countries to train and then return. The GDR needed workers for mining, industry and agriculture, and Mozambique needed money, machinery and know-how to build its industry. Grateful for the education, less satisfied with the work (Lauchhammer's working reality was very far from what was promised), after Die Wende he decided to stay and to start his own kitchen furniture company in Berlin. |
| | | | | | The fall of the Berlin Wall has produced many different stories, some of which are so specific and complex that they require a profound knowledge of German history in order to be understood. When designing projects that deal with historical issues, it is necessary to find the right balance between historical precision and emotional accessibility to arouse the viewer's interest.
The photographic project Germany Übergestern (sponsored by the Federal Foundation for the Study of Communist Dictatorship in East Germany - GDR) investigates the stories of those people who did not fit into the new system after the fall of the wall with their previous professional biography, drastically change their job and career and they had to leave their former life behind.
The Italian photographer Dario J Laganà has met some of these people after extensive research on working and industrial culture of the GDR after the reunification period. In the exhibition he reconstructs a number of these personal life-paths in photographic portraits and interviews, which bring the reader and the viewer closer to this part of German history and its protagonists. Anyone who has worked or is still at work can easily identify with these types of stories. The universal connotation of work can be understood by anyone without the specific knowledge of the socio-political circumstances that characterized events after the fall of the Wall. | | | | | | | | | | "This time-consuming, but material-saving design corresponded to the economic conditions of the GDR. In West Germany, on the other hand, where building materials were cheap and labour was expensive, shell buildings appeared only as an uneconomic marginal phenomenon." (SPIEGEL 17.09.2003) - Ulrich Müther was a civil engineer and builder, known not only in the East, that he designed and built in the 80’s the dome of the Zeiss Planetarium in Wolfsburg (West Germany) and in return the Volkswagen delivered 10,000 VW Golf cars to the GDR. After the fall of the wall, his work quickly fell into oblivion, buildings were often empty for years, some were simply demolished. This only changed with the public controversy surrounding the Ahornblatt (Maple Leaf) in Berlin in 2000, that was unceremoniously bulldozed, despite a huge outcry. (Beach rescue station in Binz, on Rügen (2013) | | | | | | In addition to the radical changes that can be seen as negative changes in working life, there are also cases where the break with the past and reunification have brought a positive change and new opportunities. Among other things, you will find stories of people who repaired umbrellas before the turnaround and now run a transportation company, a former member of the National Army that after run a gas station, a professor and dean of a West German university, who was denied studying in the GDR, the continuity story of Carl Zeiss company, who succeeded in overcoming the breaches of reunification or a woman from Vietnam who came to the GDR as a contract laborer and now works in a flower retailing shop.
It is not intention of the project to call on Ostalgie, the transfiguration of the past, a reunion and complete reconciliation of a society can only be achieved through the elucidation of the past, i. to look at the light and shadow sides without taboos.
This is also the title of "Germany Übergestern", a deliberate pun on the concepts of the day after tomorrow and the day before yesterday to create a connection between the events that happened after yesterday, so the fall of the wall and the German reunification. Germany, about yesterday also plays with a frequent language error of children and non-native speakers. He also refers to the author of the project and his perspective as an Italian on German history and the present. | | | | | | | | | | Claus Suppe was a GDR-Heimkind. He was forced to work as a boy, and was denied a professional education. Eventually, he found work in the Deutsche Reichsbahn. Although he took part in the Peaceful Revolution, after Die Wende and the reunification of the German rail system, his work was considered unnecessary and he hasn’t had the opportunity to work since. | | | | | | Dario-Jacopo Laganà is an Italian photographer living in Berlin since 2010. He is interested in photographic projects that examine the relationship between German history and society. He was co-author and project coordinator of "We Will Forget Soon" (www.wewillforgetsoon.com), a documentary-photographic research project in the footsteps of the Soviet Army in the former GDR. In 3 years, he traveled around 8000 km, documented more than 300 locations and created an archive with over 10,000 photos. This resulted in a book and a traveling exhibition (8 cities), which was part of the official program of the Berlin Art Week in 2015. In addition to his interest in history, Laganà explored the relationship between human emotions ("Emotional Entropy") and their visual representation in photography in several experimental portrait projects. In the biographical project "Germany Übergestern", he brings together these two aspects of his photographic work.
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© 27 Oct 2019 photo-index UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
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