THE BIG SOCIETY – DDR KUNST AUST SCHWEDT

THE BIG SOCIETY… How the Future was Presented to Us’ – is about a small town in the far eastern reaches of Germany (in the former DDR), and the way in which a series of visual images produced over sixty years ago still have the potential to impact upon the eye and the mind, and to bring into question the world in which we live, especially, but not solely, in the current U.K. context. Taking place in the Red Gallery the show features the outdoor murals and tableaux of an industrial town called Schwedt in Germany’s former communist block. The work, produced between the years 1960 and 1980 was created in a spirit of seeming optimism and social change. It is street art in the strictest sense of the term. Modern, epic and iconographic. Public art or propaganda? For those who made it, the work reflects the vision of a new post-war egalitarian state what was in those days called ‘The Big Society’.The exhibition will be situated in the two main gallery spaces, and will take the form of a huge and compelling montage with hand collaged and painted elements (by artist Paul Sakoilsky), making up an overall installation, made up of large scale, high quality prints from the Schwedt archive, and archive films from the GDR.Originally inspired by Dimitri Hegemann, who runs the club and is the label owner of TRESOR in Berlin and Andreas Böttcher (Curator) – the project has grown to include a group of people: Dimitri Hegemann, Andreas Böttcher (Curator), Ernesto Leal (Co-curator & Director of RED Gallery), Matthias Hamm (Architect), Rosswitha Flöter (Site Development/Corporate Communication – PCK, Schwedt), Paul Sakoilsky (curator and resident artist at RED Gallery), Rogan Jeans (Graphic Designer) and, of course, the city of Schwedt itself.

see link below for film prommon
http://vimeo.com/23699506