Text size

Colour options

Reading tools

Collective ideologies, communal practices, and women’s art in East Germany

Following a broad historiographic overview of feminist art histories and/in the erstwhile Eastern Bloc, the second seminar from When Technology Was Female zooms in on two case studies from within East Germany (Sibylle Bergemann and the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group), placing them alongside theoretical tracts published by Karl Popper and Lutz Gentsch in 1945 and 1992 respectively. If Popper and Gensch offer forth epistemological critiques of ‘the collective’ under state socialism, Bergemann and the women of Erfurt enact their analysis through embodied means, poetically and playfully pushing against the restrictive measures that would (and do) bind them. The seminar emerges from a masterclass workshop at the University of Amsterdam led by Altmann in November 2022 (more info here), which, together, with a public lecture and roundtable the preceding day (more info here) took as its focus the topic(s) of the collective, collectivity and collective practice, asking: What it would mean to approach questions around collective practice and German memory politics from the perspective of women artists who were working in the East? What would it mean to hold the historical, intellectual, and aesthetic collective ethos of Bergemann or of the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group next to the instrumentalized state forms of collectivity enforced by the party apparatus?

Talk Me Through...

Left: A photograph shows three female-presenting people silhouetted in black against a faded blue sky. They are gesturing towards the camera. 
 
Right: A photograph shows a person caught in movement, with one leg and both arms raised. They are wearing a plastic suit and hat made up from newspaper clippings and red highlights. Behind them piece of the same textile is draped along the bottom edge of a wall where it meets the floor.

Talk Me Through... is a five-episode podcast series that take listeners inside works of art that have been key in the development of Susanne Altmann’s research project When Technology Was Female. Drawn from the archive, episode two features an excerpt from the extensive walkthrough that Altmann did of the ‘Pants Wear Skirts’ exhibition at the nGbK Berlin with Hoetger. In the clip, she discusses two of the collective films made by the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group. Listen to episode two here.

Left: Still from Frauenträume. Super 8 film by the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, ‘Exterra XX’, Erfurt (1986). Camera and editing by Gabriele Stötzer (Kachold). With performance contributions from Gabriel Göbel, Verena Kyselka, Monika Andres, Monique Förster, Ingrid Plöttner and Elke Carl. Right: Erfurt Women Artists’ Group [Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt]. Name, Stadt, Land (Name, City, Country: after the German educational game), 1988. Newspaper costume and banner from the Super 8 film Komik Komisch (1988) created by Monika Andres.

*

For further listening, other excerpts from the exhibition walkthrough have also been made available: ‘To Be a Visible Part of Society’ and ‘The Town of Erfurt and the Choice to Stay’ offer insights into the gender conditions under which the women of the Erfurt group lived and worked, as well as some reflections on the fraught politics of choosing to stay in East Germany. The final excerpt, ‘The News Anchor’, features one more small close reading moment, this time going inside Signale, the group’s final collective film from 1989.


Visual references

Black and white photograph of a shop window display. In the window is a cardboard cut-out of a female-presenting person cycling. Underneath the cut-out several small objects are displayed.

Sibylle Bergemann. Rosenthaler Straße, Berlin (1979).

Black and white photograph of a female-presenting person posing in front of an almost desolate large road. They are wearing a dress and a long coat. In the background, an industrial chimney emits dark smoke.

Sibylle Bergemann. Birgit, Berlin (1984).

Black and white photograph of an androgenous-presenting person posing in front of a wall with their arms crossed. They are wearing a chunky cable-knit sweater. Behind them are plants and flowers.

Sibylle Bergemann. Frieda (1982).

Black and white photograph of an androgenous-presenting person’s upper body. The person wears an oversized light-coloured blazer and poses in dark gloves with their left arm crossed and their right arm raised and holding a cigarette. In the background a white sheet is pegged to a clothesline.

Sibylle Bergemann. Frieda von Wild, Berlin (1988).

Black and white photograph of a female-presenting person posing in the middle of a street. They have their arms wrapped around their body, holding closed an oversized coat. Their legs are tightly crossed.

Sibylle Bergemann. Heike (1988).

Two black and white photographs document the two large statues of figures; one is sitting down and the other is standing up. In the image on top the figures have been wrapped in plastic. In the image on bottom, they are wrapped with rope.

Sibylle Bergemann. Das Denkmal, Gummlin, Usedom, December 1980 and May 1984.

Black and white photograph shows a large statue of a male-presenting person being lowered down by a crane that is out of the frame. The tower at Berlin Alexanderplatz can be seen in the background on the right.

Sibylle Bergemann. Das Denkmal, Berlin (1986).

Black and white photograph shows a female-presenting child posing with their right hand on the hip. Behind them is a wall wrapped in a white material, which is covered in graffiti. Beyond the wall are buildings and trees.

Sibylle Bergemann. Bernauer Straße, Berlin (1990).

Black and white photograph shows a female-presenting person holding a baby on their lap. They are sitting at a table. Behind them is a large crack on the wall, and a tapestry hangs behind them to the right.

Sibylle Bergemann. Susanne and Paul, Berlin (1990).

Black and white photograph shows a female-presenting person sitting with legs crossed on a bench. They are wearing a sleeveless dress and an apron. To their right, on the bench, there are two bottles, a bag, and some newspapers.

Sibylle Bergemann. Untitled from the series – ’Verliererinnen der Einheit’ (1992).

Black and white photograph shows the inside of an industrial facility. In the foreground a female-presenting person poses with their right arm resting on a machine handle.

Sibylle Bergemann. Woman in the weaving plant Venusberg, Flöha, Germany (1992).

Colour photograph shows a group of five white female-presenting people in fantastical costumes posed against a blue wall.

Erfurt Women Artists’ Group [Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt]. Staged Group Shot [inszeniertes Gruppenbild] (1990). Photo: Christiane Wagner. From the archive of Gabriele Stötzer.

Colour photograph shows a person wearing a black costume with metal details and a large metal mask reminiscent of a welder’s mask.

Erfurt Women Artists’ Group [Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt]. Antenna costume from the Super 8 film Signale (1989) created by Verena Kyselka.

VIDEO

Hosen haben Röcke an exhibition video tour (in German) ›››


Textual references

PDF

Sachs, Angeli. ‘From Outstanding Workers to Sirens: Representations of Women in German Democratic Republic Painting’ in Gender Check: A Reader. Art and Theory in Eastern Europe, edited by Bojana Pejić, 79–95 (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2010). ›››

PDF

Reich, Katia. ‘Observations: Photography in the Making’ in Sibylle Bergemann. Town and Country and Dogs, 1966–2010, edited by Thomas Köhler and Katia Reich, 129–144 (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2022). ›››

PDF

Wenzel, Jan. ‘The Monument’ in Sibylle Bergemann. Town and Country and Dogs, 1966–2010, edited by Thomas Köhler and Katia Reich, 158–174 (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2022). ›››

PDF

Altmann, Susanne. ‘An Undeclared Revolution, or Revolt in their Eyes: Sibylle Bergemann’s Typologies of Womanhood’ in Sibylle Bergemann. Town and Country and Dogs, 1966–2010, edited by Thomas Köhler and Katia Reich, 175–192 (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2022). ›››

PDF

Altmann, Susanne. “‘And – I have not taken him’. The Erfurt Women Artists’ Group” in All-Women Art Spaces in Europe in the Long 1970s, edited by Agata Jakubowska and Katy Deepwell, 248–267 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018). ›››

WEB

Reinhardt, Kathleen. ‘Conscious Inability: Gabriele Stötzer’s Archive at Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig,’ ARTMargins Online, September 27, 2019. ›››

PDF

Altmann, Susanne et al. Excerpts from Pants Wear Skirts: The Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, 1984–1994, edited by Altmann, Katalin Krasznahorkai, Christin Müller, Franziska Schmidt and Sonia Voss (Berlin: Hatje Cantz and nGbK, 2023). ›››

PDF

Gentsch, Lutz. Excerpts from Realsozialismus und Karl Marx: die Stalinismus-Legende (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1992). Passages on collective education translated by Susanne Altmann. ›››

PDF

Popper, Karl. Excerpts from ‘Plato’s Political Programme’ in The Open Society and Its Enemies (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). ›››

PDF

Havel, Vaclav. ‘Preface: Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies in the Contemporary Global World’ in The Open Society and Its Enemies (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). ›››