Fellowships

• Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần

  Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần is an art laborer based in Saigon. Her practices aim to go beyond the mere aesthetic value of art, to consider art as a catalyst, which uses visual language to interpret, question, and narrate multiple spheres of a topic. She focuses on collaborative labor, between visual art and other disciplines. Arlette has contributed individually and collectively to Istanbul Biennale; Hugo Boss Asia Award; Synapse – International Curator Network, HKW, Berlin; CCA-NTU Singapore; Times Museum, Guangdong; Centre Pompidou, Paris. Arlette is currently Margaret F. Williams Memorial Fellow in Asian Art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. She graduated from Freie Universität Berlin and the California Institute of the Arts.

  
  Plattenlotus

  Periods:

  • 1974
  • 2074

  Object Histories

  Video made by the artist Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần as part of the Art in Networks fellowship programme. Plattenlotus is a creative-futuristic engagement with the story of the Vietnamese city Vinh which was rebuilt after the war with help of construction specialists from the GDR.

• Gaëlle Prodhon

  Gaëlle Prodhon graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and is currently working on her PhD thesis about photographic exchange between Algeria, France and the GDR between 1960 and 1989. Her thesis is jointly supervised at the University of Paris Nanterre by Rémi Labrusse and Mathilde Arnoux, who is a member of Deutsches Zentrum für Kunstgeschichte (Centre Allemand d’Histoire de l’Art) in Paris. Gaëlle also teaches contemporary art history at the Université de Picardie as well as history of photography at the Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas.

  
  SUNS 1958-1962-1989

  Periods:

  • 1962

  Private Contacts

  Video by Gaelle Prodhon as part of the Art in Networks fellowship programme. The video looks at relations in photography between the GDR and Algeria.

  Artists:

  • Christiane Eisler
  • Dirk Alvermann
  • Abdelkrim Amirouche

• Katrin Bahr

  Dr. Katrin Bahr is a cultural historian specializing in GDR history and memory culture and currently teaches as a professor of German Studies at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. She holds a PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2020. Her dissertation focused on the everyday experiences of East Germans in Mozambique in the 1980s. Her research combines visual media, anthropology, gender studies, and postcolonial theories to discuss international solidarity efforts abroad and at home. Within this framework, she curated the exhibition GDR Citizens in Mozambique: Private Photographs of a Forgotten Time which was shown in Mozambique, the United States, and Germany. In 2012, she and a colleague founded the Third Generation Ost network in the U.S. with the goal of exploring new discourses around the GDR and East Germany.

  
  Jenseits der Heimat. Sozialismus, Leben und Erinnerung 

  Periods:

  • 2022

  Travels

  Video made by Katrin Bahr as part of the Art in Networks-Fellowship-Programme. It looks at photographs of East Germans in Mozambique during the 1980s, a personal approach on how to work with memory and private photographs from the past. The title "Jenseits der Heimat Sozialismus, Leben und Erinnerung" can be translated as "Far from Home. Socialism, Life and Memory"

• Nikolai Brandes

  Nikolai Brandes is a post-doctoral researcher in the „global dis:connect“ project at LMU München. He wrote his PhD about postcolonial perspectives on architectural modernism in Mozambique from 1960 –1987. Nikolai then worked at the Danish National Museum in a project on suburban life in Mozambique and neighbouring countries. This research inspired him to create an online exhibition on a residential settlement in Maputo which was built by the GDR in the 1980s (to be launched in fall 2022).

  
  Zonas libertadas. Mozambique and the decolonization of the city

  Periods:

  • 1979

  Institutions and Organizations

  This video was created by Nikolai Brandes as part of the Art in Networks Fellowship Program. His project investigates urban planning processes in Mozambique after the independence from Portuguese colonial rule, and the involvement of the GDR in housing contruction during the 1980s.

• Siska

  Siska is a Beirut-born artist living and working in Berlin. He graduated from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in Beirut with a master degree in cinema studies and film directing. His artistic practice focuses on the use of archival methods to investigate social-political narratives, as well as personal and collective memories. Siska’s use of film language and codes of cinematography, as strategic mediations to activate an archive, allows him to experiment with new forms of storytelling and his own biography. His work has been shown at Gropius Bau, Berlinale, Halle 14, Paris 104 and the Mosaic Rooms in London, among others.

  
  Ferry Tale

  Periods:

  • 1975

  Travels

  Video made by the artist Siska as part of the Art in Networks fellowship programme.
  Ferry Tale is about ship traffic between the GDR and Lebanon at a time when both Berlin and Beirut were divided cities.

  Artists:

  • Siska

• Sonya Schönberger

  Sonya Schönberger is a Berlin-based German artist whose practice is strongly influenced by historical themes in connection with biographical memories marked by breaks. Many of her works have developed out of different archives that she has created or found over the last years. Alongside these, Schönberger also works with the changing public space in Berlin due to political or social changes. She works with formats like photography, theater, installations, publications and audio. Her works have been exhibited internationally, including the USA, Iran, Pakistan, Israel and Canada.

  
  Geschmortes Herz

  Periods:

  • 2022

  Travels

  Video by Sonya Schönberger
  Artifacts of MS Völkerfreundschaft an artistic approach to travel with an intuitive narration by playwright Enis Maci.

  Artists:

  • Sonya Schönberger