Unbraked Self-Movements in the Diesel Power Plant Cottbus: Seeing GDR Art Anew
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Photography as Freedom Space at the Diesel Power Plant Cottbus
The exhibition Unbraked Self-Movements. Art with Photography in the GDR focuses on an experimental image culture of the 1980s. At the Brandenburg State Museum for Modern Art, photography is not presented as neutral documentation, but as material for self-assertion, self-expansion, and artistic transgression.
A Different Photography of the GDR
In the tightly regulated society of the GDR, artists developed distinctive forms of alternative photography and a grassroots photography. The exhibition shows positions that detach from the journalistic-documentary understanding of images and reflect the conditions of the medium itself. Privately produced photo portfolios and semi-legal magazines became important spaces for publication, exchange, and aesthetic self-determination.
Between Body, Action, and Image Space
Photography appears here as an open artistic process. Staging, montage, alienation, and serial orders expand the classical image space. In connection with performance, installation, intervention, body art, and conceptual processes, the photographic image becomes a performative action space. Body, space, and action enter into a tense dialogue.
Around Thirty Artistic Positions
Among others, works by Claus Bach, Tina Bara, Micha Brendel, Kurt Buchwald, Thomas Florschuetz, Else Gabriel, Cornelia Schleime, Erasmus Schröter, and Gabriele Stötzer are on display. The diverse works make visible an art direction defined by ideas, processes, and attitudes. Their manifestations range from actions and performances to interventions, serial image sequences, and deliberately anti-aesthetic design processes.
Art Historical Classification and Curating
The exhibition concept was developed by Christoph Tannert as an external curator. The presentation connects holdings of the photographic collection of the Brandenburg State Museum for Modern Art with loans and reveals a previously fragmentarily narrated chapter of East German modernity. At the center is a non-state-supporting art practice that eluded established categories and understood photography as an independent space for thought and action.
The Diesel Power Plant as Resonance Space
The industrial architecture of the former Diesel Power Plant amplifies the impact of the exhibition. Visible materials, clear spatial axes, and concentrated museum lighting create an intense exhibition atmosphere. In the examination of the works, photographic image surfaces, serial structures, and cross-media works encounter each other. Light, forms, bodies, and space generate an aesthetic experience between historical constriction and artistic liberation.
Conclusion: Seeing Photography Anew
Visitors can expect an intense art experience about freedom, memory, resistance, and artistic self-determination. Those interested in GDR art, experimental photography, painting, installation, performance, and cultural education will experience a professionally grounded and sensually penetrating exhibition at the Diesel Power Plant Cottbus. The live palpable spatial effect opens up perspectives that no representation can replace.
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