Farewell, USSR: Seeing the world with new eyes
Childhood memories: Image from Viktor An’s photo series „The Old Club“
11 July 2009
The Iron Curtain has fallen – nothing is as it was. The change becomes tangible for people in their personal stories, their attitude towards life and their way of seeing the world. The photography and video exhibition 1989-2009: Turbulent World – Telling Time by the Goethe-Institut reveals how memories of the global political events can be linked with personal biographies and family histories of the people in the former Soviet Union.
“I can be a girl with blue eyes,” is the title of the video installation by Alevtina Kakhidze of Ukraine. She tugs open her eyelids and applies blue-coloured contact lenses. The abrupt change in the value system following the collapse of the Soviet Union demanded that people adapt themselves quickly and modify the way they saw things. They see the changed world with new eyes. The fragile identities this generated are a central theme of the exhibition 1989-2009: Turbulent World – Telling Time, which is being shown by the regional Goethe-Instituts of Eastern Europe/Central Asia and the Akademie der Künste. Opening today, it will be at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin until 13 September.
Photo gallery: "I can be a girl with blue eyes"
Sixteen photographers and video artists from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Uzbekistan and Germany have examined the effects of the socio-political revolution on their private lives. Berlin curator Jule Reuter and her colleagues selected 200 pictures and 5 videos. Nearly half of the works deal with personal family histories: the biographical tales begin with the life stories of parents, of relatives or acquaintances, with old photos from family albums and private memories. The toppled Lenin monument in the background of a wedding photo reveals how very much the social context of these stories changed.
Sie benötigen den Flashplayer , um dieses Video zu sehen © Olga Chernysheva: March
“The selected works illustrate that the processes of change cannot be described merely in political or economic terms, but must primarily be grasped as a cultural phenomenon and as a phenomenon that began with the people,” said Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, the president of the Goethe-Institut, at the opening on Friday in Berlin. “The frequently bitter and yet also ironical earnestness of most of these artistic statements encourages us to be more aware of our own situation, to recognize fears and problems and to tell of them. One of the messages of the exhibition is to dare and demand more public revelation.”
Following the presentation in Berlin, the exhibition will be shown by the Goethe-Institut in Moscow, Minsk, Kiev, Tbilisi, Tashkent, Almaty, Bishkek, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and other cities in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
