Palast der Republik

Parliamentary Committees

Some of the most notorious contemporary political conflicts are connected to the events of the German reunification years. The Treuhandanstalt, the agency in charge of privatising public property, today serves as a model for austerity policies in Greece and other Southern European countries. In some respects, the social role allotted to the East German population with respect to the West German mainstream society can be compared with the role of migrants today. The dissolution of geopolitical blocs rang in the end of the “Third Way” between state socialism and neoliberal market society, as it was pursued in Yugoslavia, for example. In “parliamentary committees” that bring together experts, artists and witnesses of the period, we will attempt to trace the idea of this trans-ethnic federation as well as a special coalition of states on a global level – the non-aligned-movement (NAM). They will also ask what we can learn from these complexes for a future policy, which will be outlined during the parliamentary assembly on Sunday.

12:00 h Schwarzbuch I: Treuhand
15:00 h Schwarzbuch II: Europäische Austeritätspolitik
17:30 h Wessen Marginalisierung?
17:30 h Dritte Wege Europa: Jugoslawien
19:00 h Dritte Wege International: Bewegung der Blockfreien Staaten
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Para-Parliament

The Side Stage of the Festspielhaus will be the venue for a parliament of non-parliamentarians – a para-parliament. Far from the big stage of representational politics, it will open a space for other forms of political practice, subverting the usual dichotomies: They will look for the political within the private, for the large within the small, the public within the clandestine. In three staged panels, artist Anna Zett, dramaturg and philosopher Bojana Kunst and dancer and performance artist Jeremy Wade will be joined in conversation by contemporary witnesses and experts, some of whom were part of the GDR’s oppositional subcultures. Together, they will give artistic manifestation to those political courses of action that public debate tends to bypass too quickly: waste and disposal, art and non-work as well as queer forms of care will become exemplary for the entanglements of East and West, socialism and capitalism, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

14:00 h Entsorgung: Utopie & Deponie
15:30 h Kunst und (Nicht-)Arbeit
17:00 h Human Resources: Reunification
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12:00 h, 13:45 h, 15:00 h, 17:15 h & 18:45 h, Hauptbühne
each ca. 15 min
Alexander Giesche
Mobiles: World of Reason ’19
Interventions & video installation
by and with Ludwig Abraham, Nadia Fistarol, Nadine Geyersbach, Alexander Giesche, Felix Lübkemann, Regula Schröter, Andy Zondag
with thanks to Theater Bremen

An environment for a poetic future parliament: in four moving images Alexander Giesche brings the components of the stage space into a complex interplay of relationships in which new balances are continually arising and which reacts sensitively to shifts of atmosphere, perpetuating and amplifying these – like a mobile that translates what is said into audiovisual spatial poetry.
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12:00 h, Hauptbühne
ca. 120 min
Schwarzbuch I: Treuhand
Privatisierung und Protest in Ostdeutschland: die Beispiele Betriebe und Wohnen
Panel
in German with simultaneous translation
with Bernd Gehrke, Andrej Holm, Inge Kloepfer, Jörg Roesler a.o.
Concept & moderation: Sebastian Kaiser & Elske Rosenfeld

Without parliamentary oversight, the Treuhand Agency sold off over 8,000 of the GDR’s previously state-owned companies – almost exclusively to West German and foreign buyers. The result was mass unemployment, emigration, and regions that are dependent to this day on transfer payments. The Treuhand countered the radical self-enfranchisement of GDR citizens in the autumn of 1989 with the neoliberal mantra of “no alternatives”, forsaking politics for economic determinism. We talk about the Treuhand as a liberalization machine, but also about the wave of protests against it that have been largely forgotten.
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12:00 h, Bornemann Bar
ca. 60 min
Occupy history II
Talk
in German
with Gabriele Stötzer
Moderation: Thomas Oberender

“Occupy History” is the attempt to not be occupied by “the” historical narrative, but to tell our own histories. In a series of conversations with a wide range of guests at the Palast, we would like to consider biographical and social events as connected and as personal as possible.
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12:00 h, Rangkino
ca. 27/60 min
Cycling the Frame / The Invisible Frame
Film
in English with German subtitles
Germany 1988/2009, Cynthia Beatt

In 1988 the actor Tilda Swinton undertook a 160 kilometre long cycle ride around the western side of the Berlin Wall for the artist Cynthia Beatt. The resulting film essay “Cycling the Frame” was then reprised by Beatt and Swinton 21 years later. The wall is now invisible and the border with the East has become porous – but has it really disappeared? An eccentric and poetic double feature that both documents contemporary history and also serves as an intimate introspection on external and internal borders.
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13:00 h, Bornemann Bar
ca. 100 min
Die Zeit ist aus den Fugen
Film
in German with English subtitles
Deutschland 1991, Christoph Rüter
in the presence of the director

Heiner Müller’s seven-and-a-half hour “Hamlet / Maschine” at the Deutsches Theater in East Berlin was the last great theatre event of the GDR. Filmmaker Christoph Rüter documented the rehearsals that started in August 1989 until time literally gets out of joint and penetrates the theatre space with the revolution on the street. The artists lead political discussions, police sirens and helicopters become the background noise of the performance.
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13:30 h, Rangkino
ca. 83 min
Duvarlar – Mauern – Walls
Film
OV with German subtitles
USA 2000, Can Candan

When looking back, the disturbances in Hoyerswerda make 1991 appear to be the year when it was no longer possible to turn a blind eye to racist violence in re-unified Germany. Turkish migration to Germany had begun thirty years before. The American film maker Can Candan came to Berlin in 1991 to talk to Turks who had immigrated about their past, present and future in Germany and the consequences of the opening of the wall and reunification for the migrant community.
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14:00 h, Seitenbühne
ca. 60 min
Entsorgung: Utopie & Deponie
Panel
in German
with Matthias Baerens, Anetta Kahane & Irene Misselwitz
Concept & moderation: Anna Zett

“Disposal” is devoted to the detritus of GDR history, the symbolism of disposal, landfill and segregation. In exchange for hard currency, the GDR accepted hazardous waste from the West in order to dump it carelessly on its own territory. After German unification, the GDR state itself had to be disposed of. With the help of video and conversation, the panel examines processes of disposal in the environment, politics and the psyche and asks what is impossible to get rid of against the background of remediated landfills..
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15:00 h, Hauptbühne
ca. 150 min
Schwarzbuch II: Europäische Austeritätspolitik
Panel
in English with simultaneous translation
with Aris Chatzistefanou, Anastasia Frantzeskaki, Andreas Siekmann, Jan Sowa
Concept & moderation: Margarita Tsomou (HAU – Hebbel am Ufer)

When Greece found itself confronted with the EU Troïka’s austerity policies in 2009, the country’s citizens did something that may have seemed surprising: They studied the role played by the German Treuhandanstalt in the process of privatising the former GDR’s state property twenty years previously. Because this chapter of German-German history gave them an idea of what to expect within a European framework in the course of an allegedly apolitical strategy of crisis management.
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15:30 h, Seitenbühne
ca. 60 min
Kunst und (Nicht-)Arbeit
Lecture & Talk
in German
with Bojana Kunst & Gabriele Stötzer

The GDR political system was built on the principle of work. Refusing to work, laziness and unproductive expenditure were therefore explosive political topics. At the same time non-work was a key issue and resource in the informal arts scene, whose artistic endeavor focussed on the moment of production and not on the public display of its art. These contradictions in the relationship between art and (non-)work and its afterlife in the Western-influenced art market of the time after the wall came down is investigated by Bojana Kunst both in a lecture and in conversation with Gabriele Stötzer.
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16:00 h, Bornemann Bar
ca. 50 min
Goldrausch
Film
In German
Germany 2005/2019, Gesine Danckwart & Sven Düfer
in the presence of Gesine Danckwart

Politicians, artists, stage designers and musicians – all of them strongly marked by the reunification era. Dressers who worked at the Palast and couples who got married there. The stage manager who remembers the ghostlike atmosphere of the final festivities at the Palast der Republik. In the wings of the empty ruin, Gesine Danckwart and Sven Düfer interviewed witnesses of this process in 2005. Their film “Goldstaub” is less of a historical document than an artistic essay. Shortly before the building was demolished, the film was screened in an installation as part of the artistic interim use “Volkspalast”. Now it can be seen at our “Palast der Republik”.
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17:00 h, Universität der Künste, Probensaal
ca. 60 min
Human Resources: Reunification
Performance
in German and English by & with Yoav Admoni, Olympia Bukkakis, Maika Knoblich, Matthias Vernaldi, Wanda Vrasti, Jeremy Wade, Allison Wiltshire
Director & concept: Jeremy Wade
Dramaturgy: Julian Meding
Artistic advisor: Allison Wiltshire
Production support: Yoav Admoni, björn & björn

The Peaceful Revolution was a party. With the reunification the hangover started. In the self-governing ritual of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where the 12 steps of recovery are the ultimate capitalist promise for autonomy, individuality and liberty, the Battlefield Nurse, Jeremy Wade’s 5000-year-old drag alter ego conjures the ghosts of utopian ecstasies past, present and future. A star studded cast of local queers will play the roles of addicts sharing their experience, strength and hope in the day to day struggle with the complicated now..
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17:00 h, Rangkino
ca. 285 min
Combat au bout de la nuit
Film
OV with English subtitles
Canada 2016, Sylvain L’Espérance

Fighting through the night: Filmed over a period of two years, this monumental documentary by Canadian filmmaker Sylvain L’Espérance plunges us into the still contentious heart of the economic crisis and austerity policies of beleaguered Greece. It does not dwell on a factual analysis of the causes of economic collapse, but gives a voice to all those who declare their solidarity amid the chaos and fear of what is to come by protesting together and building hope for a better future.
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17:00 h, Seitenbühne
ca. 60 min
Augusto Corrieri
Thoughts are born of places (or: one imago covers another)
Lecture performance
in English

Is it possible to encounter a building that no longer exists in material form? Augusto Corrieri is a specialist in the exhumation of buried buildings and stories. In this speculative lecture performance, the artist and author tells of the traces and relics of the Palast der Republik. Doing so he continues his research on the performance of non-human actors in the theatre, which he began in his lecture series and book “In Place of a Show”.
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17:30 h, Hauptbühne
ca. 90 min
Wessen Marginalisierung?
Panel
in German
with Naika Foroutan, Thomas Krüger & Thomas Oberender

East Germans and migrants often feel like second class citizens. The former have used this observation to demand recognition of their experiences of marginalisation – in most cases only to be accused of being thankless and complaining. Right wing populists have managed to score points by denouncing an alleged denigration of “proper (East) Germans” vis à vis recent migrants. What could it mean, on the other hand, to formulate this comparison instead as a call for radical solidarity?
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17:30 h, Vorbühne
ca. 90 min
Dritte Wege Europa: Jugoslawien
Panel
in English with simultaneous translation
with Srećko Horvat, Gal Kirn, Antonia Majaca a.o.
Moderation: Boris Buden

After the end of the Second World War something was created outside the twin blocks of the USA and Soviet Union that would laterserve as a kind of model for the EU: a country that unites different ethnicities, languages and religions. The principle of a federation and a third way contains a utopian core that remains relevant today. Why did Yugoslavia fail? And what can we learn from this against the background of the crisis in the EU?
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17:30 h, Bornemann Bar
ca. 94 min
Goldrausch – Die Geschichte der Treuhand
Film
in German
Germany 2012, zero one film

What happens when a globalised market economy crashes into a socialist country at full speed? What happens to this country’s people, its values? What do people in charge of liquidating millions of jobs feel like? The biggest upheaval of economic policy in post-war Germany has left its traces in the minds of the population. The documentary film “Goldrausch – Die Geschichte der Treuhand” lets the former executives of the privatisation agency Treuhand have their say as well as civil rights activists who developed alternative concepts of privatisation – ultimately, as it turned out, in vain.
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19:00 h, Vorbühne
ca. 90 min
Dritte Wege International: Bewegung der Blockfreien Staaten
Panel
in English with simultaneous translation
with Vijay Prashad, Samia Zennadi a.o.
Moderation: Boris Buden

What do Marshal Tito, the Indonesian billionaire Sukarno, the heads of state of Ghana and Egypt plus the Chinese and Indian Presidents have in common? Together they founded one of the most important global utopian projects of the 20th century: the Non-Aligned Movement. This association was strongly anticolonial and anti-imperialist. And it attempted the impossible: to be something other than capitalism and Stalinist socialism. A utopia containing many aspects of solidarity, that now appear more topical than ever on the political agenda.
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19:45, Bornemann Bar
ca. 30 min
Occupy History III
Talk
in German
with Gabriele Dolff-Bonekämper
Moderation: Thomas Oberender

“Occupy History” is the attempt to not be occupied by “the” historical narrative, but to tell our own histories. In a series of conversations with a wide range of guests at the Palast, we would like to consider biographical and social events as connected and as personal as possible. Gabriele Dolff-Bonekämper, Professor of Monument Preservation at the TU Berlin, talks to Thomas Oberender about the installation “Sturzlage” and the round tables of the GDR.
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20:15, Bornemann Bar
ca. 60 min
Occupy History IV
Talk
in German
with Bernhard Schlink
Moderation: Thomas Oberender

“Occupy History” is the attempt to not be occupied by “the” historical narrative, but to tell our own histories. In a series of conversations with a wide range of guests at the Palast, we would like to consider biographical and social events as connected and as personal as possible. Novelist and jurist Bernhard Schlink will describe the GDR after the opening of the Berlin Wall.
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22:00 h, Hauptbühne
ca. 120 min
CHEAP
1+1 UNGLEICH 1+1. Ein ausgeleiertes Konzert
Performance

-------------- CHEAP ----------- 1+1 UNGLEICH 1+1 --------------- -------- EIN AUSGELEIERTES KONZERT --- MARTIN SIEMANN ------------ --- VAGINAL DAVIS --- PAMELA SCHLEWINSKI ---- MARC SIEGEL --------- RICHARD GABRIEL -------- JOHN BLUE ----------- MAURICE DE MARTIN --- ------- POLA SIEVERDING -------------- SUSANN-MARIA HEMPEL ------- ----- SUSANNE SACHSSE ------ ŞENOL ŞENTÜRK -------- GÄSTE ----- AKIRA KNIGHTLY ----- RUTH SCHÖNEGGE ------- MAXIMILIAN BRAUER ------- RUTH FISCHER -------------- JA JA DER HELLE BÜRGER SAGT PRIMA WAS REINIGT SO DUFTE DAS KLIMA -------- CHARISMATISCHE SCHURKEN UND FEURIGE UNHOLDE ----- MEIN BETT WACKELT ICH KANN NICHT SCHLAFEN - ------------------
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23:00 h, Bornemann Bar
Open End
The Performance Bar
Performance
with: Tizo All, Dillon Baiocchi, Iris Bergman, Florian Borstlap, Margo van de Linde, Daniel van den Broeke, Imke Zeinstra a.o.

The Dutch collective Performance Bar consists of international and multidisciplinary artists who present their shows on a 2x2m stage: a bar. No presentation lasts longer than the time it takes to drink a beer, which is just what the audience is asked to do. The boundaries between café and theatre, bar and stage, artist and audience, and not least between “high culture” and entertainment, are blurred. The show is reminiscent of the varied uses of the historical Palast der Republik and mixes them up into a perfect cocktail to end Saturday night with.
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00:00 h, Rangkino
ca. 88 min
Berlin Babylon
Film
in German
Germany 2001, Hubertus Siegert

Obviously there is a lot of fear of openness in Berlin, a horror vacui: Potsdamer Platz in the 1990s was a space of potential, where in architectural terms everything seemed possible – a place that might be able to define what the muchvaunted “new mid-point” of reunified Germany should be. In spectacular footage reinforced with a soundtrack by Einstürzende Neubauten, this long-term documentary shows the contrasts of a city undergoing reconstruction, between a fear of emptiness and a construction frenzy.