This workshop takes as its starting point the research project Where is My Karaoke? by Sarnt Utamachote and Phuong Phan, who investigated the life stories of students and former contract workers from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Where is My Karaoke aims to map the trajectories of these people while at the same time argues for their active participation in the arts and politics in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and their home countries. In this on-going project, encounters happen, friendships are forged, and laughter, tears, and food are shared.

How did we meet? Of Objects and Stories expands from the same spirit and invites former contract workers and students to be part of the narratives that we write down together for the first time. It features conversations about objects, stories, anecdotes, and gossip that people have held for a long time, but never had the chance to speak out loud nor share, such as songs they have sung, photos of places they have visited, everyday objects that they used, and flavours that provoke memory.

The workshop is a space and process to share and listen to these stories and learn more about the objects that people bring to the workshop that are a part of their lives in the GDR or after unification or that play an important role in the stories of migrant communities in the GDR. Whether it’s jasmine rice that was imported to Leipzig from Thailand, music cassettes from the West,  jeans brought to East Berlin from Cologne, or any other object that workshop participants kept in their house, all of these stories and objects matter. Together with the participants and the objects, we reflect on this history and its reverberations in the present, (im)mobility, borders, surveillance, subversion, and the entanglements of these on individual and collective lives.

With contributions from:

Sarnt Utamachote, Phuong Phan