OSTBEGEGNUNGEN (2024/25)

collaboration with Luisa Bäde & Karolin Benker

OSTBEGEGNUNGEN is an interdisciplinary workshop & performance project for the visibility of East German perspectives of the Nachwendekindergeneration (post-reunification generation).

The three artists Karolin Benker (theater direction), Josefine Luka Simonsen (dance & performance) and Luisa Bäde (participatory documentary film) use the project to complement the often West German-influenced perspective on East Germany with diverse East German socialized voices and realities of life and thus expand the view of the East with new narratives alongside the current media AfD debates.

In 2024, the project will begin with the research phase with workshops, in which the artists will explore their own biographies as well as the collective influences of the transformation processes of the post-reunification years together with 32 Nachwendekinder in Cologne and Weimar. In these workshops, the artists collect diverse perspectives of the Nachwendekindergeneration (post-reunification generation).

In November 2024, the artists will spend a month in the Häselburg Gera in a residency organized by the Thüringer Theaterverband and work on the insights and material from the workshops in an artistic research between dance, theater and film. Based on the residency, the artists want to create a multimedia performance in 2025 that will make the voices of the children of the post-reunification period visible and create a meeting space between "East" and "West" and the different generations of the East.