Lichtenberg Studios

Marijo Ribas

I am interested in the spaces and how they carry ideology and symbolism. Memorials, public architecture and rural areas are linked to production and migration situations. My research in Lichtenberg began with the sculpture designed by Mies Van der Rohe, built in 1926 and demolished in 1935 by the Nazis. I was interested in the idea of how a memorial that no longer existed, still has a place in the memory. And since that I thought about the function of a memorial, does a memorial repair any damage?

Lichtenbeg has a rural and proletarian past, the most important migrant population during the 60-70, the “gastarbeiters” came from Vietnam. After the fall of the Berlin Wall there was no plan for many of the Vietnamese population living in Lichtenberg, who worked in semi-slavery conditions, subject to time, cohabitation and birth control. With the change in the economic model and the closure of many factories, some Vietnamese returned to their homeland and some decided to stay in Berlin, there is still a significant community, some important meeting points are the Pagoda temple and the Dong Xuan Center.

Food culture is also an identitarian subject, the ritual of harvest, share, sell and eat together. It is not a memorial, it’s ephemeral, but can be toxic or memorable. I used a vegetable, a cucumber, to construct my personal narrative around significant ideas, facts and spaces I found during my residency in Lichtenberg. The result of the research is linked to a series of studio and street photography crossing that ideas.

Marit Lindberg

In this conceptual art project a person born in 1961 walks through the district of Lichtenberg and thinks about time, history and circumstances. Places reflect the past while new things are constantly happening.

Present and past exist in parallel and being in Berlin means standing in the middle of European history. In the former East Berlin, small details appear all the time that are reminiscent of other places, but are also something special to this place.
The person remembers a postcard that is usually sold at memorial museums from the DDR era. The picture was taken in 1961 and shows a painful scene where a family is torn apart. One parent climbs over a coil of barbed wire and the other is left with a child in their arms.
Perhaps the child was only a few years older than the person who now walks about thoughtfully.
Has the child seen the other parent again? Did they get back together in 1989?

The person goes to the Ringcentret, which was a major attraction in the early 1980s as one of the first shopping centers in the DDR. Now the center is being rebuilt. It is full of scaffolding and the shops are temporarily closed. Instead, the person goes to the Castello Kiez shopping center in Lichtenberg and drinks a cup of coffee.
The mall was built in 2000 with “creative energy but no precision”, according to its own website. (castelloberlin.de)
The person goes to Kosmonauten Allé, just because the name of the street sounds exotic. It is reminiscent of colonial endeavors that seem to belong to the past, even though they are very current.

The person in this work was represented by four cartoon paper dolls that looked like Marit Lindberg but could really be anyone. The paper dolls are photographed in various locations. Each doll was finally left in different places in Lichtenberg.

When the dolls are placed for the last time, they are marked with the text:
A person born in 1961 walks around and thinks about history, time and coincidences.

Perhaps someone found a doll and perceived its meditative posture as an act of resistance to the senseless war and tension in the world?