Name: Unbraked Self-Movements. Art with Photography in the GDR
Start: 2026-09-03T13:00:00+02:00
End: 2026-09-03T13:00:00+02:00
Location: Dieselkraftwerk

Photography as Resistance: Unbraked Self-Movements in Cottbus

The exhibition Unbraked Self-Movements. Art with Photography in the GDR introduces a chapter of art history that is as sensitive as it is powerful. At the Brandenburg State Museum for Modern Art in the Diesel Power Plant Cottbus, visitors encounter photographic works that deliberately oppose a purely documentary understanding of images and instead set body, space, action, and idea in motion.

Photography Beyond Representation

At the center is the artistic practice of the 1980s, when photography in late GDR served as material for experiments, staging, and boundary crossings. The works are characterized by serial orders, performative gestures, interventions into the image, and an attitude that evades state-imposed viewing perspectives. It is precisely this tension between control and freedom that gives the exhibition its intense atmosphere.

An Artistic Experience Between Body, Image, and Space

The presentation makes clear how closely art could be connected to photography, performance, installation, and body art. The result is an aesthetic experience that sharpens the gaze: Instead of a smooth surface, image spaces full of friction, subjectivity, and poetic shift emerge. Anyone interested in GDR art, experimental photography, and cultural historical contexts will find a convincingly curated museum experience here.

Christoph Tannert as External Curator

The exhibition concept was developed by Christoph Tannert as external curator. This gives the exhibition a professionally grounded classification that makes the significance of non-state-supported art visible and allows a long-fragmentarily narrated chapter of East German art history to be re-read. The selection focuses on artists whose works evade clear categories and still appear surprisingly relevant today.

The Diesel Power Plant as a Suitable Venue

The Brandenburg State Museum for Modern Art is one of the most important addresses for art from the GDR and modernity in Brandenburg. The Diesel Power Plant in Cottbus combines industrial architecture with museum presentation, thus enhancing the impact of this exhibition: a place of concentration where art history, present, and cultural education intersect.

Conclusion: Unbraked Self-Movements is an exhibition for everyone who wants to experience photography as an open artistic field. It showcases courage, experimentation, and self-assertion in late GDR and invites visitors to discover these works in the original and within the museum space.