Dance floors of reunification

More than 30 contributions and artistic projects explore club, subculture and youth culture in Berlin and eastern Germany before, during and after reunification.

Personal memories, photographs, films, oral histories, objects, and private and institutional archives shed light on the diverse experiences of those years of upheaval.

What happened on the dance floors whilst society was being reorganised? Which spaces and communities already existed before 1989? What emerged in the spaces of freedom in the post-reunification period? Who was able to make use of these freedoms, and who experienced loss, violence or exclusion? And which stories found their way into the cultural memory?

The exhibition does not present a linear narrative. It brings together experiences that existed simultaneously: new beginnings and disintegration, freedom and right-wing violence, new communities and exclusion, appropriation and dispossession.

It also focuses on East German perspectives beyond Berlin, as well as Black, migrant, queer and female perspectives, which have so far received little attention in the familiar narratives about club culture and the post-reunification era.

Space as part of the narrative

In works developed specifically for this venue by the renowned light artist Lars Murasch, DJ and producer Cecilia Tosh, and media artist Jascha Müller-Guthof, light, sound and video fragments combine to create an immersive spatial experience.

Murasch’s light installation draws on the raw architecture of the Kraftwerk’s hidden vaulted cellars and evokes those temporary spaces, vacant properties and reclaimed derelict sites where club culture flourished during the years of upheaval.

In her multi-channel sound installation ‘Sediment’, Cecilia Tosh responds to the resonance and visible traces of the space. Sampled voices and original recordings from archives blend with fragments of emotions and memories from the club and subculture scene around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. A video collage installation by Jascha Müller-Guthof adds a visual dimension to the spatial experience. In this way, the underground space itself becomes the first part of the exhibition, creating an exploration of the coexistence of many realities amidst upheaval and new beginnings.

Club culture before and after 1989

The exhibition does not begin with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Photographs by the Leipzig-based photographer Christiane Eisler document the punk scene in the GDR at concerts, in private spaces and at self-organised meeting places.

Materials from the EXTREM youth club in Lugau tell the story of a venue of supra-regional significance for the punk, post-punk, new wave and independent scenes. Photographs, flyers, documents and memories trace its history from the mid-1980s through to the post-reunification era. They show that important precursors to East German club culture also emerged away from the major cities.

Sebastian Wischmann’s contribution takes us to Wismar. Milk bars, holiday camp discos, youth clubs, student cellars and the halls of seamen’s wives’ homes emerge as venues for dancing and cultural exchange. Homemade loudspeakers and improvised lighting systems point to practices that lived on after 1989 in abandoned factories, cellars and open spaces.

Deindustrialisation, transformation and new spaces of freedom

Further articles take us to Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt), Jena, Dresden, Haldensleben and Apolda. Youth clubs, former industrial sites, village halls and improvised venues emerge as spaces for self-organisation and engagement with a radically transformed society.

With ‘TreuhandTechno’, the theatre collective Panzerkreuzer Rotkäppchen combines electronic music culture with deindustrialisation and the social consequences of the Treuhand’s policies. Historical artefacts, interviews, sound works and archive material show how dance floors emerged in places where businesses, jobs and familiar social structures had disappeared.

A multi-screen installation by Christian Gesellmann tells the story of the Kassablanca in Jena. It traces a path from youth culture and the musical upheaval of the 1970s, through punk and oppositional subculture, to the free spaces, ruptures and appropriations of the post-reunification era.

In the photo series ‘Hecht’, Lysann Buschbeck follows young people in Dresden’s Hechtviertel district from the 1990s to the mid-2000s. Her images expand the narrative of freedom and new beginnings to include social insecurity, crumbling structures and the search for one’s own communities.

Another feature uses the example of the ‘Der Club’ youth centre in Haldensleben to explore the emergence of an East German hardcore scene, its international connections, the confrontation with right-wing violence, and the disappearance of subcultural spaces in small towns across East Germany.

Berlin: from squats to temporary clubs

Historical film and video footage by Mark Reeder offers an insight into the music and subcultures of East and West Berlin prior to the fall of the Wall. It demonstrates that cultural developments after 1989 built upon pre-existing scenes, musical networks and venues.

Archival material on the Schizzo-Tempel and Mainzer Straße tells the story of the squatters’ movement and the self-organised spaces in East Berlin in the early 1990s. Improvised clubs, bars, squats and cultural venues combined political self-organisation with new forms of coexistence and celebration.

Contributions from the circles around Tresor and Fischbüro lead us to places where East and West Berliners met and new aesthetic and social connections were forged. Filmmaker and archivist Ulli Happe presents historical footage of squatted houses, the Tacheles, the East Side Gallery, the Mutoid Waste Company, and the techno and underground scene of the 1990s.

Interviews, music, videos and archive material on the history of the E-Werk tell the story of a key club of the early 1990s, but also of the increasing commercialisation of Berlin’s club culture. Der Dschungel and Delicious Doughnuts Research broaden the musical perspective to include disco, acid jazz, soul, rare grooves, house and trip-hop.

The film ‘Klub 2000 – Rome, Paris, Marzahn’ by Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani reflects on the codes, promises and the incipient displacement of Berlin’s club scene, as well as gentrification.

Black, migrant and queer perspectives

Cultural theorist Alexander G. Weheliye examines German reunification and Berlin’s club history from a Black and autobiographical perspective. His video essay links the violence of the early 1990s with the question of which Black and migrant experiences have been omitted from the historiography of techno and club culture.

Gayhane, the queer party series that has been taking place at SO36 since 1999, embodies a history of Berlin’s club scene in which migration, queerness, diasporic experiences and community converge. Decorations, music and voices from the series’ community demonstrate how Gayhane has broadened notions of who shapes Berlin’s club culture and what music is played on its dance floors.

Researcher Verda Kaya examines Berlin’s hip-hop culture, which has been shaped by people of diverse backgrounds since the 1980s. Voices from the scene recount hip-hop amidst new spaces of freedom, social upheaval and racist violence. Further contributions draw parallels between the post-reunification era and the Black musical origins of techno in Detroit, and challenge the notion of an exclusively German or white origin story.

Participants

The participating artists, authors, eyewitnesses, academics, projects and archives include:

Alexander Ghedi Weheliye, Anna Seifert & Josephine “Pepita” Niang, Archive of Youth Cultures & Daniel Schneider, Brox +1, Björn Reichardt, CaptCha (Richard Haufe-Ahmels, Jonin Herzig, Paul Marwitz-Seyffert), Cecilia Tosh, Christiane Eisler, Dariya Susak & Ann Titovets (aka Intektra), Delicious Doughnuts Research Group, Eberhard Elfert, E-Werk Preservation, Gayhane & Ipek Ipekcioglu (aka DJ Ipek), Gerriet Schultz, Jascha Müller-Guthof, EXTREM Youth Club (Alexander Kühne, Henri Manigk & Frank Kiesewetter), Kassablanca (Christian Gesellmann & Till Morgenfrüh), Kunstkopf, Lars Murasch, Lena Szankay & Matías Maroevic, Lysann Buschbeck, Mark Reeder, Martin Conrads, Nachtarchiv Chemnitz, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Paul Snowden, Romy Jaehnig, Schwules Museum, Sebastian Wischmann, Sophie Yukiko, Soundwatch Music Film Festival, Thale Reitz, Theatre Collective Panzerkreuzer Rotkäppchen (PKRK), Tresor Records Archive, Uli Happe, Ulrich Gutmair & Mo Loschelder, Verda Kaya.

The exhibition is curated and produced by:

Katharin Ahrend & Lisa Weinhold from Clubcommission Berlin e.V.