Abstract
In 1983 a group of young East German women defied repressive laws and artistic conventions to form an unassumingly renegade collaborative group with a naive mission: to create an alternative meaning in their lives through art, beauty, and camaraderie. In this way they presented a subversive resistance to the one-party state's authoritarian regime that dictated the role of art in the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) society. The group, 1 founded by the small city of Erfurt in the German state of Thuringia by ambitious dissident Gabriele Stötzer, 2 began without high expectations of rebellion, and yet eventually grew into a performance art collaborative that focused on self-expression and social disruption. Before creating their performances, Stötzer and these women expressed themselves through paintings, weavings, photography, pottery, amateur 8mm films, and sewing clothes. By 1991 they founded a space, the Kunsthaus Erfurt (Art House Erfurt), for contemporary art exhibits, workshops and studio spaces. The Kunthaus Erfurt still thrives today and symbolizes the legitimacy of their six-year (1983-1989) resistance against the GDR's directives.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Artistic Bedfellows: Histories, Theories and Conversations in Collaborative Art Practices |
| State | Published - 1 Jan 2008 |
EGS Disciplines
- Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures