As part of the ongoing project Where is my karaoke? by Sarnt Utamachote and Phuong Phan, a workshop titled ‘How do we meet?’ invited migrants and families based in Germany, who lived, studied, and worked in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to share their personal archives and attached stories. The objects that were brought forward by the participants, the stories that shaped their belongings, as well as the personal collections of the workshop coordinators comprise this cluster’s display. The featured objects capture elements of everyday life under state socialism that were essential to cultural and memory preservation, be they ceremonial or culinary, or those of leisure. It is through these daily practices that they insisted on making, building, and collectively preserving worlds within.

With contributors such as Marina Kem, Lisa Kanhsa, Sonny Thet, Dresdner Brüder Band, and Modestudent in der DDR, migrant life in the GDR is put forth in its multiplicity as carved spaces and paths within state socialism and its systems. Some found ways to navigate the system’s social and cultural bounds (and to some extent discriminatory practices) by smuggling in objects; others by making music, drawing, and cooking for themselves. The objects selected and displayed include, for example, jeans smuggled in from Thailand (which fell within the Western sphere of influence at the time) to East Germany, where such items were usually forbidden, yet highly valued. The transport boxes of a Vietnamese contract workers’ family, usually highly controlled at airports, mark this passage that many traversed across the two continents. The models of red fruits signal to various ingredients that migrants lacked during their time in the GDR, such as chili or garlic, sometimes brought in by their colleagues from the embassy or through informal markets. Some fruits, besides their use in food, also bear religious connotations in relation to ancestral worship.

The selection of songs that accompany the objects and interviews demonstrate how music is transferred across borders: a journey of a composition from Cambodia to an East German recording studio; that of a memory shared from Thailand to Laos; and the adaptation of American classics by a band formed in Dresden.

Objects, voices, and sounds are presented here as textures of the daily lives of those who migrated to the GDR. These personal collections of objects and stories that were kept over decades and are shared in the present are testament to the potentials of world-making in its multiple facets, however modest or ordinary. Bringing this collection of items together in the context of Echos der Bruderländer attempts to place these histories within a larger network of common kinship, languages, and sounds.