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.
