Working Class Mothers

"Working Class Mothers" (WT), a collaboration between Riyadhus Shalihin and Kristina Dreit, seeks an inquiry narrative, poetic and fiction encounters of the labor experience between two mothers in different geographical and political environments: the neo-liberal regime of a new order in Indonesia and postsocialist labor migration in Germany. This project tries to give weight to the truth while digesting a poetic + fictional translation and finding an imaginary missing link that could surpass the given fact: a new solidarity landscape, a place for harvesting hope.

Riyadh's mother is a pharmacist who also has an agency of healers in the public sphere: a possessed reciter and acupuncturist. Kristina's mother, educated in a patisserie in the Soviet Union, now works in a health clinic in northern Germany. In their cupboards and shelves lies a manifest of memorabilia, clothing, and tools, each echoing an economic agenda and strategies for dealing with employment apparatus.


Concept, Artistic Direction: Kristina Dreit, Riyadhus Shalihin | Research: Fauziatun Bahroemsyah, Tatjana Dreit, Karolina Dreit | Sound: Ganda Swarna | Production Management: Dian Arumningtyas | Research Consulting: Militant Labor Union Bandung | Support Postproduction Video: Rizki Lazuardi | Support Video: Felix Röben | Dramaturgy Assistance in Bandung: Indeks Project Space