Unbraked Self-Movements at the Diesel Power Plant Cottbus: GDR Photography as a Space of Freedom
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Photography as a Space of Freedom: Seeing the GDR Anew
The exhibition Unbraked Self-Movements. Art with Photography in the GDR at the Brandenburg State Museum for Modern Art – Diesel Power Plant Cottbus focuses on experimental image practices of the 1980s. At its center is an art that understands photography not as neutral documentation but as material for self-assertion, self-expansion, and artistic boundary transgression.
A Different Photography of the GDR
In the tightly regulated society of the GDR, artists from various disciplines developed distinctive forms of a different photography and a photography from below. Privately produced photo collections and semi-legal magazines became important spaces for publication, exchange, and aesthetic self-determination.
The exhibition presents photographic positions that detach themselves from journalistic-documentary understandings of images. Alienation, montage, serial structures, and consciously anti-aesthetic impulses turn photography into an open space for thought. The image not only refers to an external reality but also reflects its own conditions, its creation, and its effect.
Between Performance, Installation, and Image Idea
The works on display connect photography with action, performance, intervention, body art, and installation. Artistic actions become visible, sequences of images develop their own rhythms, and photographic materials enter into a tense dialogue with body, space, and memory.
With works by Claus Bach, Tina Bara, Micha Brendel, Kurt Buchwald, Klaus Elle, Thomas Florschuetz, Else Gabriel, Wolf Kahlen, Matthias Leupold, Cornelia Schleime, Erasmus Schröter, and Gabriele Stötzer, a multi-voiced panorama of experimental art in the late GDR unfolds. The positions show how photography became an instrument of self-assertion and a medium for new image realities.
Curation and Art Historical Placement
The exhibition concept was developed by Christoph Tannert as an external curator. The exhibition reveals an art-historically relevant chapter of East German modernity: a non-state-supporting art that evaded established categories and understood the photographic image space as a performative action space.
The photographic collection of the BLMK is considered the only museum collection for photography established in the GDR. In addition to so-called author photography, it also preserves a significant extent of experimental photographic works. The exhibition connects these collection holdings with loans, thus opening a precise access to a previously lesser-known image culture.
The Diesel Power Plant as a Resonance Space
The industrial architecture of the Diesel Power Plant enhances the impact of the presentation. Visible materials, clear spatial axes, and focused museum lighting create a dense exhibition atmosphere. In the view of the works, photographic image surfaces, serial structures, and media-crossing works meet in a striking way.
Thus, an art experience emerges between history and the present. The aesthetic experience makes not only the political constriction of the GDR tangible but also the desire for freedom, bodilyness, and artistic autonomy. Questions of control, publicness, and media truth extend into the present.
Conclusion: Photography as Artistic Self-Determination
Visitors can expect a concentrated, image-rich exhibition about experimental photography, subcultural energy, and the power of artistic boundary transgression. Those who want to discover GDR art, performance, installation, and photography as an open means of expression will experience a professionally grounded and sensually intense view of works at the Diesel Power Plant Cottbus. This exhibition deserves an on-site visit as it makes photography as memory, resistance, and living aesthetic experience newly tangible.
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- Website: https://www.blmk.de/programm/ungebremste-selbstbewegungen/
