“The Romanian dream in its very raw shape”

For Vlad Nancă the House of the People in Bucharest, Ceauşescu’s former palace, is a building that represents the trauma of an entire population. So he, a child of the 1989 Central Eastern European revolutions, proposed to add some cupolas and crosses to it in order to turn it into the cathedral of national redemption a lot of people apparently crave for in contemporary Romania.

Vlad would have liked to see the feeling grow that the palace, which was build on the blood and tears of so many of his compatriots, is symbolically given back to the people. Albeit decisions were taken in a different way, Vlad never tires to think about and voice new cultural expression in public space. Find out about his art, which he creates in recurrent personal trips to the past.

Watch
Part 1 and Part 2 of the interview by Barbara Lubich.

Learn
how project artists discuss the exhibition in Bucharest.

See
the report of the project visit to Bucharest in December 2007.

“I was attracted by the pictures you would never find in the press"

It not only seems to be a landmark of Berlin, Germany and even Europe, but also a signifier of human lives: the Brandenburg Gate. Photographer Harald Hauswald has been attracted by it from an early stage on, and has now also centred his contribution to the OVERcoming DICTatorships exhibition on it. “At school we had compulsory civics, what the people called “Red Light Radiotherapy”. Once I asked our teacher about a famous photo, taken during the time when the wall was being built. I wanted to know why the Combat Groups of the Working Class at Brandenburg Gate turned their backs on the West. I could not understand why they were aiming their guns towards the East. Officially they were supposed to protect us against the class enemy. But if this had been true, they would have been facing the other way. How come they were presenting their backsides to the class enemy?”

For him Photography was a way to virtually escape from the feeling of confinement which terrified him in the German Democratic Republic. He used it as an opportunity to fully develop his personality and skills in spite of and against the off-the-shelf lifestyle imposed by real socialist authorities. That is why in 1989 he saw himself much better prepared for the tough sides of capitalist dog-eat-dog society than a considerable number of East Germans who had actually enjoyed and accepted the regime’s general policy of directing people through life and who only resented its specific impotence to live up to its pretensions. From the late 1970s onwards Hauswald had opened his eyes and lenses to the back side of the East German capital’s social reality of “people rooting in rubbish bins, and punks and hooligans” which was consciously underexposed in the official media.

Harald Hauswald, who currently has two exhibtions on the myth of Eastern Europe and football hooligans on display in Berlin, was interviewed by Barbara Lubich on his personal way through real socialism and beyond. Learn about an exciting drift of a young tramp yearning for Led Zeppelin, catapulted by love from the provinces to the capital and opposing the system just by his desire to live. Click here to see the video.

Inside OVERcoming DICTatorships

Film Documentary by Barbara Lubich

One of the unique features of Overcoming Dictatorships is its combination of literary, visual and scientific explorations, which opens up various levels of reflection. Throughout the last two years authors read their pieces, artists presented sculptures and paintings, and academics explored the historical context. During workshops they came together in order to share experiences and find appropriate ways to present them to a European public.

We now offer you yet another level of reflection. The film documentary by Barbara Lubich is not only a mirror of project events, but rather a treasure chest filled with magic insights into discussions and intimate personal stories. You can see Hungarian artist Sándor Pinczehelyi confront his works from the 1970s, which he had increasingly rejected over the years because – as he himself put it – “they have been quoted so many times.” Zsófia Balla describes the dire personal consequences of political decisions and explains how poetry helped her to cope with her experiences in Ceauşescu’s Romania. And Venetian painter Silvestro Lodi reappropriates the tailoring patterns of his granddad in order to form his own artistic style.

Learn more about what happens when artists are invited to individually present, discuss and integrate their work into the creative process. What may happen if the formation of an exhibition is not impaired by curating along political, economic or aesthetic lines, but influenced by debates of artists?

See OVERcoming DICTatorships – the last chapter.

The complete film documentary will be on display in participating galleries. Trailers will be presented online while the exhibition proceeds from station to station. For more information contact director Barbara Lubich and project coordinator Gert Röhrborn.