Inviting Utopia, Reading

You are cordially invited to “Inviting Utopia: Radical dreams and practices in and beyond the 1989 revolution” – a reading with Max Hertzberg, author of the East Berlin Series, and myself:

18th Jan 2018, Buchhafen
Okerstr. 1, Berlin (Neukölln), 8 pm ( in English).

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Max will read from his trilogy of political fiction set in a counter-factual post-1990 GDR and talk about how he saw a grassroots democracy as a real possibility. I will be reading from the prelude of my forthcoming book A Vocabulary of Revolutionary Gestures which sketches the radical scope of the practices and projections of the 1989 revolution. (in English)
https://buchhafen-berlin.de/en/category/events/

You can find more on Max’s fantastic East Berlin Series here: www.maxhertzberg.co.uk

Max’s background articles on the revolution of 1989/90 are to my mind the best comprehensive summary of the events in English and are highly recommended:
http://www.maxhertzberg.co.uk/articles#content 

Winterreise: Bischofferode

F/STOP: DIE WINTERREISE: BISCHOFFERODE: “In ihrem »Moskauer Tagebuch« fragt Christa Wolf, ob es soetwas wie produktive Trauer geben könne. Gestern in Bischofferode, im Kali-Bergbau-Museum als der Bergmann Willi Nebel über die Arbeitskämpfe von 1993 erzählte,

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vom Hungerstreik der Arbeiter, der die Schließung des Werkes nicht abwenden konnte, war in jedem seiner Sätze deutlich wie stark die 24 Jahre zurückliegenden Ereignisse noch in ihm arbeiten. Wer die Geschichte der Wiedervereinigung zu verstehen sucht, sollte nach Bischofferode fahren, genauer als im Museum des Thomas-Müntzer-Kalivereins wird man sie kaum erzählt bekommen.”

Danke, F/STOP Leipzig, für diese erschütternde Konfrontation mit dem hier und allerorts noch gänzlich unbearbeiteten Gündungstrauma des wiedervereinigten Deutschlands. Danke Jan Wenzel, für den Reisebericht (and Andreas Rost für die Bilder!). Produktiv ist die Trauer ja leider vielleicht schon, die Frage wäre, wie sie auch positiv produktiv werden kann.

Was ich aber auch aus Bischofferode mitnehme: Das Ausmaß der Proteste und der Solidaritätsbewegung, die Geschwindigkeit und die akute politische Intuition, mit der die Kalikumpel und ihre Familien sich organisierten, und ihr unglaubliches Durchhaltevermögen.

Die Brutalität und Kaltschneuzigkeit, mit der in der Niederschlagung ihrer Proteste sogleich die tatsächlichen Verhältnisse der sich als Sieger der Geschichte feiernden marktwirtschaftlichen Demokratie an ihnen durchexerziert wurden, spricht von der tiefen Panik, die die Möglichkeit eines Gelingens bei der anderen Seite auslöste. Die Furcht muss groß gewesen sein, dass sich hier, aus dem Impuls der einen, gerade vergangenen Revolution, eine weitere, vielleicht noch viel grundlegendere, globalere manifestieren könnte.

Die Fotos auf der Schautafel unten wurden von protestierenden Kumpels in Berlin während einer Demo aufgenommen, von ihren Frauen über Nacht in Bischofferode entwickelt und am nächsten Tag in Berlin den Behörden vorgelegt um – erfolgreich – zu belegen, dass die einzigen gewaltsamen Provokationen der Demo von (schlecht getarnten) Zivilpolizisten ausgingen.

Schautafel im Kali-Museum mit Fotos von einer Demonstration in Berlin
Ausstellungsdetail Kali-Museum in Bischofferode
Schautafel: “Tagebuch” des Hungerstreiks im August 1993

 

“Zur Verfassung” – Berliner Hefte #5

Am 23. November 2017 erscheint unsere Publikation: Zur Verfassung – Recherchen, Dokumente 1989-2017, Berliner Hefte zu Geschichte und Gegenwart der Stadt #5 (Elske Rosenfeld, Kerstin Meyer, Joerg Franzbecker).

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Wir freuen uns, das Heft am 

25.11.2017, 18 Uhr
im Maxim Gorki Theater/ Herbstsalon
Palais am Festungsgraben
Am Festungsgraben 1, Berlin

vorstellen zu können.

Zum Heft:

1990 galt in Ost-Berlin für ein halbes Jahr eine Verfassung, die weitreichende politische Bürgerrechte enthielt. Diese waren aus den Erfahrungen der Revolution 1989 von den Bürgerbewegungen und der Opposition am Zentralen Runden Tisch der DDR formuliert worden. Die Verankerung der erweiterten politischen Rechte in der gemeinsamen Landesverfassung scheiterte jedoch im ersten Gesamtberliner Abgeordnetenhaus – einzig die Volksgesetzgebung wurde übernommen. Damit ist es in Berlin möglich, Gesetze durch Volksentscheid und ohne das Parlament direkt zu beschließen. Das gelang bisher mit den Volksentscheiden zur Offenlegung der Wasserverträge und zum Erhalt des Tempelhofer Feldes. Für letzteren stimmte im Mai 2014 eine Mehrheit in allen Bezirken. Dennoch versuchten die Regierungsparteien, das Tempelhofer Feld-Gesetz wieder zu kippen. In Reaktion darauf wurde 2016 das Volksbegehren Volksentscheid Retten eingeleitet, um die Volksgesetzgebung in der Verfassung zu stärken. Beide Vorgänge, 1989/90 und 2016, hatten zum Ziel, dass alle Berliner*innen an der Ausgestaltung der Verfassung teilhaben können. Sie bilden die Klammer für erschienene Heft.

Zur Verfassung – Recherchen, Dokumente 1989–2017 wurde von der Berliner Landeszentrale für politische Bildung gefördert.

Die Publikation ist die dritte von drei Berliner Heften, die im Rahmen des nGbK-Projektes Ene Mene Muh und welche Stadt willst Du? Beiträge zum Berliner Wahlherbst 2016 entstehen.

96 Seiten, mit einer Bildstrecke von Elske Rosenfeld aus Videostills von Klaus Freymuth
Elske Rosenfeld, Kerstin Meyer, Joerg Franzbecker (Hg.),
November 2017
7€
ISBN 978-3-946674-04-7

Erhältlich über www.bookspeopleplaces.com, www.ngbk.de und den Buchhandel 

Tagung “Ostwind”

Die unglaublich wichtige Tagung “Ostwind – Soziale Kämpfe gegen Massenentlassungen und Betriebsschließungen in Ostdeutschland 1990 bis 1994” findet nächstes Wochenende im Haus der Demokratie statt. Ein erster Versuch, die völlig vergessene bzw. schon damals ignorierte Geschichte der Arbeitskämpfe ab 1989/90 in der post-DDR aufzuarbeiten, oder zunächst überhaupt erst einmal in Erinnerung bzw. das Bewusstsein zu rufen.

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“Es ist höchste Zeit, sich dieser vergessenen Bewegung wieder zu zuwenden, zumal Ostdeutschland namentlich von jungen Aktivist/innen häufig nur als Hort von Rassismus und Nationalismus wahrgenommen wird. Wenn jedoch die Entwicklung in Ostdeutschland auf diese Vorgänge reduziert bleibt, gerät aus dem Blick, dass es zeitgleich eine emanzipatorische betriebliche Basisbewegung gab. Zum besseren Verständnis einer in Ostdeutschland erstarkten rechten Bewegung gehört es aber auch, die dramatischen sozialen Umbrüche und die Niederlagen der Protestbewegung der 1990er Jahre danach zu befragen, inwieweit sie zu massiven Entsolidarisierungsprozessen führten und damit rechtsradikale Ideologien stärkten.”

“Namibia Today”, Notes on an Exhibition

Commentary on Laura Horellis project “Namibia Today”, Donnerstag 9 Februar 2017, 19 Uhr

U-Bahnhof Schillingstraße, U5, Eröffnung und Rundgang mit Andreas Guibeb, Botschafter der Republik Namibia, Uwe Jaenicke, SODI e.V. und Thomas Lendrich (Druckhaus Gera)

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At U-Bahnhof Schillingstraße, on what used to be Stalinallee back when it was built, yesterday’s opening of “Kunst im Untergrund 2016/17: Laura Horelli” took place in more or less the heartland of the old East German establishment, so that, apart from the bracing cold, the sight of the assembled audience of well dressed older gents and ladies  sent me into a misty discomfort that was not at all lessened when the former Director of the Druckerei Fortschritt (Printing House Progress), current day director of the private Druckhaus Gera GmbH, took the mike.

Once in charge of one of the rare and exceptionally privileged party-owned enterprises, he began to extoll the joys of working for such a great and no doubt exceptionally privileged company in the service of what – as he (somewhat under his breath) conceded – was a somewhat bureaucratised, state-sponsored take on “international socialist solidarity.”

As the Director rhapsodised in front of the the mildly interested faces of the assembled art crowd, and the eager-going-on-blissful faces of the East German pensioners, (not to mention the completely non-comprehending faces of the apparently non-German speaking Namibian embassy staff), a slightly dishevelled looking middle-aged man appeared among the crowd of regular commuters a few meters down the platform and, beer can raised, launched into a loud – and near perfect – impersonation of one of the more famous of General Secretary Erich Honecker’s nasal pronouncements (the one about how neither ox nor donkey, will ever throw socialism off its inevitable course to historic triumph). An intervention that struck me as so absolutely accurate in its perception of the tone and content of the Director’s speech and so perfect a response, that I was sad to see the man disappear, back first, through the doors of the arriving U-Bahn, still reciting party slogans and quite obviously undeterred by the Director’s efforts at shutting him down. The latter, by the way, delivered with the kind of authoritarian condescension that I assume must be the prerogative of those – across times and systems – whose lives and aspirations align pretty damn smoothly with each particular system’s (often not so different) notions of a successful, valuable life.

Got me thinking, too, about the work of translation, or of whatever, that is still needed until a word as innocuous as “solidarity” can be understood in its always specific and changing connotations, until, in other words, particular uneasinesses can be shared a little more evenly across a Berlin (art) crowd – rather then held by a few, and released by one, beer can in hand (on a good day).

18.02. 2017

because of… i guess “life” in general, and “berlin” in particular, it so happened that i got into a conversation with a blogger for the swapo-critical swapo youth league and a scholar of african history last night and learnt, that “solidarity” of the GDR towards the african liberation movements involved having the stasi help from and train up the ANCs and Swapo’s security services – including instructions on torture. puts “solidarity” kind of into perspective.

Zur “Causa Holm”, Gespräch am 29.1.2017

Audio: Diskussion „Eine unlautere Debatte“ – Wolfhard Pröhl und Peter Neumann zur Debatte um Andrej Holm // vom 29.01.2017

> Link zum Audiomitschnitt unseres Zeitzeugengesprächs mit Wolfhard Pröhl und Peter Neumann im besetzten Institut für Sozialwissenschaften an der HU (mit Kerstin Meyer und Enrico Schönberg)

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Beide waren beteiligt an der Auflösung von Stasi-Strukturen 1989/90 und in der Nachwendezeit. Peter Neumann war Mitglied der Projektgruppe zur Stasi-Auflösung in der Verwaltung für Inneres in Berlin und Wolfhard Pröhl beteiligte sich an der Stasi-Auflösung in Dresden. Beide positionierten sich sehr eindeutig in der Debatte um Andrej Holm. In der Veranstaltung vom 29.01.2017 beschreiben sie den Umgang mit Stasimitarbeitern und IMs zum Ende der DDR und erklären, warum es ihnen in der aktuellen Debatte so leicht fällt, für Andrej Holm Position zu beziehen.

“Stau”

On a screening of Thomas Heise’s “Stau”, Trump, Eribon, and a Nazi demo

Facebook and Real Life curated an interesting week for me, this past week. Kind of sad week, but maybe that is also the fault of the grey and the cold that sits unrelenting on this city and does not lift. So I have been working on a rewrite of the first chapter of my thesis/upcoming book, and it starts with a kind of quick run through of the rise and failure of the revolution of 89 and then an even more cursory run through of the rise and failure of state socialism in the SU and the GDR and a tentative connecting up of the two.

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And then Tuesday was the screening of Heise’s Stau at HAU, as part of the Heiner Müller programme there (http://www.hebbel-am-ufer.de/programm/spielplan/zeitschleifen-filmabend-mit-thomas-heise/2312/). Watching “Stau” is always a strange experience for me (and I have watched it many times), the tenderness Heise feels and makes one feel for his subjects is something so heavy, so thorny, and so precarious, and I wish I shared Heise’s confidence in standing by it, publicly. Luckily (maybe), it is something that dissipates in Heise’s later films about the same protagonists, and as they settle into more solidly ideologically fortified versions of themselves our sympathy dwindles to nothing and things return to how they should rightfully be and feel. Heise screens “The Battle of Algiers” after, and then tries to figure out what that juxtaposition might mean with a panel including himself, Boris Buden and post-colonial curator Marie-Hélène Gutberlet, who in the process communicate nothing, except for a continuing failure of the two experiences of being leftwing (East, West, with Yugoslavia stuck somewhere in between) to communicate – seemingly mutually undisturbed by each other (except in confrontations, such as the one performed, for the one hundredth time, during this panel at the HAU) in 26 years.

Later this week, a German friend posts (thanks Christiane K.) a Guardian article that rereads Trump’s popularity as not so much an expression of irrational xenophobia, but as a rational (?) working-class response to the precarisation of the american blue collar worker through trade policies supported by republican and democrat elites alike (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/07/donald-trump-why-americans-support) and on a similar note: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/13/bernie-sanders-supporters-consider-donald-trump-no-hillary-clinton, and if we agree, I wonder if we would extend such a generous interpretation to the Pegida supporters in Saxony (a survey I saw somewhere a while ago seemed to suggest that motivations here are far reaching, too, and economic fears often as frequent as or more frequent than xenophobic ones).

Today then photos of a neo-fascist march (http://m.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article153229244/3000-Rechte-marschieren-durchs-Regierungsviertel.html) that passed practically unhindered through the center for Berlin, and apart from the German and Reichskriegs-flags there are the Flags of East German cities (Halle) and provinces (Saxony, Brandenburg), and I am disturbed further by one banner that reads “Wir lassen und nicht BRD-igen”. This appears like a direct quote from the demonstrations of 1989/90, only turned on its head. In the winter of 1990 this slogan was used by the anti-nationalist left, that is, the parts of the groupings that first took to the streets for a reformed GDR, in the early demonstrations, when the “We are the people” that was devoid – by which I mean, utterly devoid – of nationalist connotations, staked a radical claim to political sovereignty by the people-as-demos as a non-identitarian and all inclusive collectivity (Ranciere later used this historical example to illustrate his definition of the political as disruption vs the policing of settled identities).

I wonder, with some discomfort, if what I see in those pictures from yesterday, and what we see in those pictures from Clausnitz and Bautzen etc. is really the failure of the revolution of 1989 finally catching up with the rest of us (or should I say, them?), 26 years after it failed for those of us who carried (from the moment we carried) the “Wir lassen uns nicht BRDigen” banners against and increasingly at the margins of a growing mass of (yes, generally more working class) protesters, who no longer felt represented by the citizens movements and their agenda of a renewed socialist state and, accordingly, pinned their hopes on the nationalist pro-reunification path.

Then there was this article, that someone posted today, (https://krautreporter.de/1376–warum-ich-aus-sachsen-weggezogen-bin) and it is sobering, too, and hints in a maybe similar direction in the last paragraphs, but there are no answers here, and neither do I feel that any will be forthcoming any time soon.

(originally posted on facebook, 12.03.2016)

Announcing DiEM

Facebook Post after witnessing the event DiEM 25 – Announcing the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, 12.02.2016:

by a wonderous turn of events (that surprised no one more than myself) i ended up attending the inaugural event of varoufakis’ new pan-european coalition diem25 at volksbühne last night.

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i expected to find varoufakis at least charming, but he did not endear himself by starting off the evening by screening an agitprop/ motivational video featuring ominous brussel technocrats vs. blooming daffodils and a soundtrack by brian eno (who will have to be mentioned again later) …

varoufakis set the tone for the evening by spouting a set of banalities that was then echoed and repeated by a (long) procession of speakers, starting with katja kipping who (bless her soul) exuded exactly zero charisma, followed by various MEPs who suffered from much the same problem.

a video address by ada colau provided a temporary moment of relief followed/ continued by her deputy and the mayor of a Coruña, two sweet looking men, who spoke, briefly, and with the enthusiasm and humility of people who have actually in some small/not so small, and significant way made a difference to (and with) a number of real and struggling people, and who i very much hope will join forces with others like themselves and carry their fight from the streets to the centres of power.

the dramaturgy of the evening seemed to rest on the simple trick that the overall number and names of the speakers was not revealed until introductions were made of each subsequent speaker by varoufakis himself, who kept suspension high by not revealing the next person’s names until the end of each short presentation.

a woman in front of me who was wearing headphones for the translation at one point started proclaiming excitedly half way through one such introduction (much louder that she realised on account of the headphones): jetzt kommt der sisek, jetzt kommt der sisek. alas he did not. for another 5 or 6 speakers.

when zizek finally did appear (again via prerecorded video message) he added little more than his usual rant at those leftist romantics who apparently do nothing but dream of revolution all day, and endorsement of a realpolitik that seemed to be the discouraging bottom line of the evening’s generally underwhelming overall message – but at least he said nothing nearly as offensive as some of the things he has had to say about various subjects (syriza’s detractors, islamic/ist refugees) over the past at least and especially six or so months. but in a way of course it never matters what zizek says as long as he looks suitably mad and dishevelled and touches his nose a lot or tugs at his hair or his shirt. some of the most known and outspoken purveyors of all conceivable forms of political correctness of this city (i am not mentioning names here) were literally doubled over in their chairs with hysterical laughter, and had me wondering when it became acceptable to make such unabashed fun of someone’s nervous tics/ bordering on medically relevant condition. srećko horvat was luckily given less of a platform then he has been in some printed and live forums recently and used his speaking time mostly to remind himself and an entirely uninterested audience of how great it was that he was once again on stage with not one, not two, but three alpha celebrity lefties whose ranks he clearly aspires to join in the near future (on the merit of achievements known to himself alone).

i had to leave around 23.30 when the promised Q & A had still not started, but varoufakis invited gesine schwan in what i felt was a nice move, to speak and explain her support for as well as criticism of the movement – in what was probably the most factually substantiated (regarding the workings of the EU bureaucratic and political structures) and interesting contribution.

ah, yes, and brian eno spoke before that (after an equally incongruous skype-in from julian assange from london) and compared diem25 charmingly to the way david bowie, and disturbingly, also the way U2, went against the machinery that had made them successful, but was now curtailing and making impossible all they initially cared and stood for. the U2 reference notwithstanding it was one of the more lucid and insightful contributions of the evening.