How do the transnational solidarities of the GDR shape our present? Echoes of the Brother Countries explores visions and illusions
16.2.2024
Echoes of the Brother Countries—What Is the Price of Memory and What Is the Cost of Amnesia? Or: Visions and Illusions of Anti-Imperialist Solidarities
Exhibition and research project
2.3.–20.5.2024
Opening: 1.3, 18:00
Press preview with the curators: 29.2, 11:00
Registration: presse@hkw.de
hkw.de/en
On the weekend of 1–3 March, the HKW will be opening Echoes of the Brother Countries. You are cordially invited to the press preview on Thursday 29 February at 11:00. Please register at presse@hkw.de
Between 1949 and 1990, thousands migrated to the GDR from countries such as Algeria, Angola, Chile, Cuba, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Syria, and Vietnam. Their stories remain largely untold. The exhibition and research project Echoes of the Brother Countries is dedicated to the often overlooked political, economic, educational, and artistic links, as well as the exchange and migration movements between the GDR and other socialist-orientated states, the so-called brother countries.
However, in the shadow of the iconographic depictions of solidarity such as a ‘united class struggle’, or ‘socialist internationalism’, there were other realities. Despite the GDR’s emphasis on fair labour conditions and professional development, migrants experienced labour exploitation, cramped living quarters, surveillance, curtailment of certain freedoms such as getting pregnant or being in a relationship, racist and xenophobic attacks, withheld wages and broken promises by their governments and the GDR government.
However, there were also practices of solidarity across individual, local, national, and global scales, including GDR support for so-called 'anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and liberation struggles' in other parts of the world. How were these relations made possible? And how much of this history and its legacies remain visible today?
The exhibition and research project brings together numerous positions that create a common space for rememberance, dialogue, and reflection on transnational solidarities and contradictions. With an extensive opening and programme, Echoes of the Brother Countries explores the question of how these interwoven histories continue to shape the former brother countries to this day, especially the lives of the people who migrated under the conditions of these alliances.
The multidisciplinary project critically maps the GDR history and relations with its brother countries, a term that is critically taken up for its gendered problematics, and illusions of and allusions to equality. Amid erasures, gaps, and absences in broader public educational discourses, the project attempts to understand the reverberations of those histories in Germany as well as in the former brother countries to situate these relations as part of a global history of cultural movement and exchange.
With contributions among others by Abed Abdi, Khaled Abdulwahed, Donald Acquaye, Maimuna Adam, Kais al-Zubaidi, Santos Chávez, Ivan Cibulka, Sarah Ama Duah, Nguyễn Lương Đức, Ângela Ferreira, Carla Filipe, Lea Grundig, Sami Hakki, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Isaac-Newton-Schule, Emile Itolo, Januário Jano, Hiwa K, Euridice Zaituna Kala, Martha Ketsela, Songhak Ky, Verena Kyselka, Heinz-Karl Kummer, Hernando León, Humberto López, MORUS-Oberschule, Nástio Mosquito, Olu Oguibe, César Olhagaray, Zohra Opoku, Charles Owusu, Minh Duc Pham, Gertraude Pohl, Elske Rosenfeld, Riad Ali Saad, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Sophie-Brahe-Gemeinschaftsschule, Dito Tembe, Sung Tieu, Christoph Wetzel, Horst Weber
Programme Opening Weekend
Friday, 1 March 2024
18:00
Doors open
19:00
Opening Speeches
Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Katarzyna Wielga-Skolimowska, Thomas Krüger, Paz Guevara, Marie Helene Pereira
Sylvia Wynter Foyer
20:00
Gedichte aus meinem Wörterbuch [Poems from my dictionary] (2024)
Poetic performance and intervention by Farkhondeh Shahroudi
Sylvia Wynter Foyer
21:00
Zafraan Ensemble
Concert
Miriam Makeba Auditorium
22:00
Cami Layé Okún
DJ Set
Magnus Hirschfeld Bar
Saturday, 2 March 2024
13:00
A Walk Through the Exhibition with...
Paz Guevara and Marie Helene Pereira (English)
Sylvia Wynter Foyer
14:30
Situated Storytelling
Echoes from Chile, Ghana and Vietnam
Conversation with representatives of the partner institutions: Cristian Vargas Paillahueque (Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino), Ato Annan (FCA Ghana), Trung Mai (Hanoi Ad Hoc), and Anh-Tuấn Nguyễn (Heritage Space)
Beatriz Nascimento Hall
16:30
On memory and oblivion frameworks of multidirectional memory
Panel discussion with Peggy Piesche, Patrice G. Poutrus, Lucia Murìel and Dito Tembe
Safi Faye Hall
18:30
Ritual as a March as Protest
Performance by Euridice Zaituna Kala with Pak Ndjamena
Bessie Head Foyer
19:30
Film screening, discussion
Oyoyo, Chetna Vora, 1980, DDR, 65', German, Spanish, Portuguese, with English subtitles
Followed by a conversation with vinit agarwal and Can Sungu
Safi Faye Hall
Sunday, 3 March 2024
13:00
A Walk Through the Exhibition with...
Eva Stein (German)
Sylvia Wynter Foyer
14:30
Situated Storytelling
Echoes from Algeria, Angola und Cuba
Conversation with representatives of the partner institutions Louisa Barbari (rhizome), Luamba Muinga (NDONGO119), and Arianna Covas (Ríos Intermitentes)
Beatriz Nascimento Hall
15:00
Children's Discoteque
Haunani-Kay Trask Hall
16:30
Film screening, discussion
The Homes We Carry, Brenda Akele Jorde, 2022, Germany, 89', Portuguese, German, English, Zulu, with English subtitles
Followed by a conversation with Brenda Akele Jorde and Sarah Deichsel, moderated by Marie Helene Pereira
Safi Faye Hall
19:00
Karaoke / Open Mic
with Spicy Ginkgo Collective
Magnus Hirschfeld Bar
Partners
For Echos der Bruderländer HKW cooperates with Rhizome, Algeria; NDONGO119, Angola; Ríos Intermitentes, Cuba; Foundation for Contemporary Art – Ghana; Heritage Space, Vietnam; Hanoi Ad Hoc, Vietnam.
The project is funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) and by the TURN2 Fund of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation).
In association with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation as part of the PARTENARIATS GULBENKIAN programme to support Portuguese and Lusuphone art in European artistic institutions.
Visit Information
Opening Times
Wed.–Mon. 12:00–19:00
Extended opening hours during evening programmes.
Free admission on Mondays and on every first Sunday of the month (Museumssonntag Berlin).
Childcare with programme
HKW offers free childcare for many of its programmes. For further information visit hkw.de
Current information about visiting and accessibility.
Weltwirtschaft Restaurant is open daily, from 12:00–00:00 on weekdays and 10:00–00:00 on weekends.
Contact
Jan Trautmann
Pressesprecher
Lead Communications Officer
Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin
T: + 49 (0) 30 397 87 157
presse@hkw.de