Mari Chilf

My first visit to Lichtenberg was to the city museum under the studio. A short documentary, part of an excellent exhibition about the district’s past, set the tone for my research. The hidden camera footage shows a young woman sitting on a sofa in the living room of an apartment, tensely explaining something to the man sitting opposite her, whose legs are all we can see. The girl’s excited tone of voice and body language triggered a strong emotional reaction in me, activating something from my past – triggering feelings, flashes of memory. She reminded me of the past that had defined the first 23 years of my life, which I had had to spend under the repressive socialist dictatorship of Ceausescu in Romania. My research therefore focused on the traces of this repressive regime.

The locations of my research: the former GDR secret service, the headquarters of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) – now a museum – and its surroundings, the archive, the Stasi prison in Hohenschönhausen and its surroundings, the archive of the Lichtenberg Museum, walks in the district. My activities: collecting material, taking photographs, reading, discussions, reflections and silent interventions.

The month I spent in Lichtenberg was a time of change for me: a time of experiences, lessons and realizations. I was moved when I saw the listening devices, the steam engine for opening letters and the incredibly organized system that terrorized millions of people through control and intimidation. In Romania at that time it was said: “The walls have ears”, we covered the phone with a pillow when we talked about serious things, and we never knew which of our friends and acquaintances were reporting on us. One concept I had never heard of was the “file mile”. It had never occurred to me that I might have a file too, but now I realized that I did.

What can we learn from the past? How can we prevent the past from repeating itself (the case of the frog in the water that is just beginning to boil…)?

The sight of the sites, the many new insights and experiences I have gained during my visits and reading have inspired me to do intensive inner work. It has triggered an impulse that I must now tackle.
A real gem for me was a photo album from the time of the Drusba Festival in the archives of the Lichtenberg Museum. The Drusba Festival, which was held annually between 1972 and 1989 in the city park of Lichtenberg, about 1 km from the Stasi headquarters, to strengthen German-Soviet friendship with various art performances and stalls, was popular with the GDR population. I wonder how people experienced this state-ordered festival? There was no such event in our country at the time, only the “Singing Romania” festival with obligatory performances in schools and companies.

My intervention

The experiences described above inspired me to make an intervention. “Grateful to be here” – I wrote this sentence on the ground in front of the iconic entrance to the Stasi headquarters with birdseed, which was then eaten by the birds.
I’m grateful that it’s all just a bad memory and that it’s now a museum. I am grateful that the repressive state terror, which I am well aware of, is over and that this cruel place, which has been preserved in its original state, can now be visited as a Stasi museum, a research and memorial site about the political system of the former GDR.
I took the picture with a top view from the floor of an office of Erich Mielke, the dreaded Minister for State Security who headed the Stasi for 30 years.
Overall, the stay in Berlin, which was made possible by the artist-in-residence program in Lichtenberg, was a time of encounter with the past and inner work that stimulated a new creative reflection on the historical past/my personal past.
Thank you for the opportunity.

March, 2025

Peter Kees

On my first walk along Rummelsburg Bay, I noticed two seemingly abandoned shopping carts filled with plastic bags, clothes and shoes. They looked like social exclamation marks next to the smart new buildings, townhouses, homes for the wealthy on the banks of the Spree Bay. I photographed the found objects and used one of the pictures to create a missing person’s report, which I copied several times and posted on lampposts and building entrances with the text: “Missing – shopping cart with several bags. In it clothes, shoes. I would be grateful for any information. The contents are for survival.

Last seen: S-Bahn Rummelsburg. Please call 0176-48532440.” I actually received a few calls: My car had been found. On another tour in Buchberger Straße, a rather inhospitable area, I discovered a shabby, tattered bag hanging from a window on the façade of the Berliner Rockhaus, a former office building from the GDR era. What might it contain? I also photographed this anti-idyll to make another flyer, which I posted in the area around the site. “Wanted – bag with valuables. The bag itself is getting on in years, was hanging on my window in Buchberger Straße (Berlin-Lichtenberg). It was probably stolen. It contained cash, among other things. I would be grateful for any information. Please call 0176-48532440,” was written on it. I received calls again: “Look out of your window,” said one. “Otherwise I’ll take the cash out.” On the other hand, I didn’t receive any calls about the third wanted ad I posted in the Frankfurter Allee area on the corner of Schulze-Boysen-Straße. “Found – Brown leather wallet with cash and private notes found here around the corner. The owner should call 0176-48532440.” The wallet was pictured on the note. A few more forays through the district would have allowed me to continue playing with this kind of artistic intervention in many other places. Back at the picturesque Rummelsburg Bay with all the contrasts between modern housing culture, simple huts on the water, also called houseboats, or the Rummelsburg prison converted into apartments, built in 1877-79 as a labor camp, operated during the National Socialist era as the Berlin-Lichtenberg Municipal Work and Detention Center, and in GDR times as a prison (would you want to live here?), the green fence along the water kept me busy. A biotope is protected there, the habitat of numerous animal species on the banks. “…any disturbance, such as trespassing, is prohibited. Violators will be prosecuted under the law”, the signs there say. So why not attach Italian video surveillance signs to this fence, which, with their black camera with a yellow background, certainly have a signal effect. So the Italians are now monitoring here. An absurd game that turns the rules of human interaction into a theme. Exploring Berlin-Lichtenberg with its Stasi headquarters, the Asian wholesale market, the zoo, the many high-rise buildings and many an uncomfortable corner in the gray November with its short light is an undertaking that can only be rudimentary at best in three weeks. There is still so much that you can and should react to artistically… I had brought some no man’s land with me. Better: a red and white barrier tape with the word “no man’s land” printed on it. On the way to the Ring-Center, I noticed four trees standing close together in front of a high-rise building on the corner of Frankfurter Allee and Gürtelstraße. I declared this area no-man’s land and was amazed that it was still there days later. One question keeps bothering me: what if land didn’t belong to anyone? Could it still be conquered? It’s about Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s critique of property: “The first person who fenced in a piece of land and boldly said: ‘This is mine’ and found such simple-minded people who believed it, became the true founder of bourgeois society. How many crimes, wars, murders, sufferings and horrors would one man have spared the human race if he had torn out the stakes or filled up the ditch and called out to his kind: ‘Don’t listen to this cheat. You are all lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all and the earth to none.” The subject matter concerns the question of living space and armed conflicts in equal measure. It is about inequalities, about conflicts. Today, stretching a red and white fluttering tape around an area of “no man’s land” is an intervention in property relations, and at the same time a confrontation with Rousseau, the existing social and political inequalities, and also with the cruel wars of the present. I must confess that I also left the district once: I also marked out a no man’s land in front of Café Moskau in the Mitte district. The no man’s land there wraps around a bus shelter. Lichtenberg may forgive me for being unfaithful once.

March, 2025