Anatolia, with its beautiful landscape and regions with little industry, is the origin for a significant portion of the nearly one million paid workers, the so-called ‘Gastarbeiter,’ who migrated to Germany between 1961-73.
Podlasie is the eastern voivodeship in Poland known for the Bialowieża Forest and the brutality of the EU border regime. During the transition period in the 1990s and after Poland's accession to the European Union in 2004, one in three adults emigrated from this region to the United States and Western Europe.
Anatolia and Podlasie are therefore linked by a common migration heritage, mainly due to labor migration.
The long-standing director of the Kunstraum Bethanien Stéphane Bauer, the artist and activist from Turkey Özlem Sarıyıldız and the curator and artist of Polish origin Zofia nierodzinska reflected on contemporary forms of labor migration, and its cultural representations.
Is solidarity possible on the basis of shared migration experiences? Is the story of labor migration present in Berlin and in the storytelling of contemporary Germany? How do artists work with the topic of labor migration? What do the next generations of migrant workers and their families have to say about Germany and Europe in general? How can their voices be more present in contemporary, multidirectional debates on the politics of memory? How does the shared transnational legacy of migration affect German and European society and politics? Finally, can migrants save Germany from a national-conservative backlash?
We also showed and commented the Ulay's performance of stealing a Spitzweg painting from the Berlin New National Gallery in 1976.
Die Veranstaltung hat auf Englisch stattgefunden.