• A photograph of a mirror ball, reflecting lights in different colours on the ceiling, occupies the top half of a white page. At the bottom, large black text reads:

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    Workshop title page. The Academy course booklet, 2021.

  • Across an empty square, a building is visible. On the left, channel letters spell out

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    View of Kosmos cinema, Berlin, 2021. Opened to the public in 1962, Kosmos was one of the most modern film theatres in the GDR, serving as an important prestige project of the socialist state. Photo: Laura Fiorio.

  • Empty street. Two buildings are visible, a brown building and a terracotta one, with a green tower. There are several cars parked in front of the second building and some bare trees along the street. The sky is cloudy.

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    Along the sidewalk in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, 2021. The Gethsemanekirche – a central meeting point in the 1980s for opponents of the East German regime, and a crucial site of the demonstrations of the “Peaceful Revolution” in the autumn of 1989 that resulted in the fall of the Berlin Wall. Photo: Laura Fiorio.

  • A large terracotta bricked building is visible across a courtyard. On the ground floor, the building has green doors. There are six trees in bloom in the courtyard. Two cars are parked underneath them. The word

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    Inside the courtyard of the Kulturbrauerei, Berlin, 2021. The Museum in der Kulturbrauerei focuses exclusively on the history of former East Germany and features the permanent exhibition “Everyday Life in the GDR”⁠⁠(opens in a new tab)⁠. Photo: Laura Fiorio.

  • Exhibition space with several installations. At the back, there is an image being projected on a wall, and a large doll dressed as a jester. There are photographs on the side wall and a table emitting some light. A plastic shape, resembling a dress, hangs next to it. At the centre of the space, another table has a propped up brochure.

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    Exhibition installation view. Hosen haben Röcke an. Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt 1984-1994 [Pants Wear Skirts: Erfurt Women Artists' Group, 1984-1994⁠⁠(opens in a new tab)⁠], neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), Berlin, 27 November 2021 - 30 January 2022. Photo: Ruppert Bohle.

  • Three people wearing face masks look at a poster lying on a table. There are other posters stacked underneath. Behind the table, there is a large shelf with several grey and white boxes. Other rows of shelfs are partially visible behind it.

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    Visit to the Archiv der Jugendkulturen⁠⁠(opens in a new tab)⁠[Archive of Youth Cultures], Berlin, 2022. An introduction hosted by workshop participant Daniel Schneider to the extensive collection of zines, leaflets, posters, pins and other printed matter materials from across punk, hip hop, techno genres. Photo: Megan Hoetger.

  • Dark 2D map with some spots marked with red, yellow, pink and blue pins. There is a pink line connecting three of the pink pins. A large white block with some black text and a black-and-white photograph is connected to one of the blue pins.

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    Detail. Pablo Santacana López and Daniel Schneider, Mapping disco comradeship in East Berlin: which places, whose voices, what traces?, 2021.

  • On a landscape digital white page, there are four square images. Three of them contain imperfect circles, two red and one yellow. Another is a photograph of a series of lines coming from a centre point, and making up a round shape. To the left, there is a column of black text.

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    Screenshot. Aikaterini Gegisian, Dust Covers have a Score, 2021.

  • On a landscape digital white page, there are four images, occupying the bottom half of the page. A text, written in black, appears above them.

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    Screenshot. Sabine Marie, Heard and Unheard, 2021.

  • Two images appear side by side. On the left, there is an illustrated poster with the words

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    Detail. Sterre Barentsen, A Conversation about Trees in East Berlin, 2021.

  • archiving-club-cultures_-curriculum-plan.pdf [pdf, 55.5 KB] 

  • Susanne Altmann interview 

  • Scoring Elusive Archives 

Taking the keyword “comradeship” as its starting point, this workshop unfolded across five sessions, each considering specific historical and contemporary aspects of how practices of urban sociality and gathering operate for different bodies across contexts and times in the (post-)socialist spaces of (former) East Germany. The sessions featured a guest series including artist researcher Doreen Mende and political theorist/party organizer Wanda Gaimes, as well as an exhibition walkthrough with art historian and curator Susanne Altmann of the exhibition Pants Wear Skirts⁠⁠(opens in a new tab)⁠ at the nGbK, Berlin. It culminated in two publications: the first, Scoring Elusive Archives: Traces of Disco Comradeship, an online collection of scores by workshop participants for The Whole Life Repository; and the second, a performative essay entitled “Re-assembling East German Nightlife: Four Scores for Curating from Elusive Archives” co-authored by Hoetger and Kong for the edited collection Archives on Show. Ghosting, Challenging, Transforming – A Curatorial Glossary.

The workshop was conceived and facilitated together with art historian Carlos Kong for the second iteration of The Whole Life Academy, a joint initiative of Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; the Pina Bausch Foundation, Wuppertal; and Arsenale, Berlin.

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Art/Obscenity/Underground Cinema in West Germany, 1968–1973: Circulating through the Debates

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