Can music be measured? Is its impact predictable? Can it change our political consciousness? The GDR's cultural representatives believed it could! 66 years ago, they organized the "first dance music conference" in the Lusatian industrial metropolis of Lauchhammer – to reinvent the sound of socialism.
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VISUAL DIE LAUCHHAMMER FILES
Janette Mickan (Berlin theater collective LUNATIKS) and Lothar Berndorff (Ein Hit ist ein Hit) have examined the supposedly lost files of this seemingly absurd conference in the archives of the Berlin Academy of Arts, evaluated them, and transformed them into a play about the connection between political consciousness and popular culture.
The LAUCHHAMMER FILES will be staged for the first time in 2025. In a docufictional reconstruction, the historical figures encounter today's reality. A live band will play the sound of Lauchhammer and test its functionality in direct interaction with the audience.
THE LAUCHHAMMER FILES dare to pose a thought experiment:
What might such a conference trigger today? And what responsibility do artists bear in a democracy under pressure? A lively study of pop, politics, and the power of music.
This second collaboration between writer and director Janette Mickan and author and historian Lothar Berndorff follows a production about West German Schlager of the 1950s and the emergence of the West German music industry, which premiered at Heimathafen Berlin in 2022.
(IN GERMAN)
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