there: contemporary art magazine is a one-time-only production made in conjunction with the video film mission: untitled (blue), as a part of its sculptural situation.
Other than being a fictional magazine made to impart the flooplan of the ‘mission’ on its front cover, it is also a document of its time by functioning as a real magazine.
The issue is entitled ‘Dealing in Secrets’, Berlin Spring 1999, and contains the same type of content as other art magazines. As its editor and designer I was intent on making it as real as could possibly be, as a documentary of real art events and people of the time; to the extent that it even carries advertisements for fellow artists’ exhibitions and events (where any good editor knows that advertisements are key to a magazine’s financial longevity). I have listed these advertisements below, as well as the magazine's content, but firstly here is the text of the magazine's 'cover story' .
Dealing in Secrets: an interview with Christoph Tannert on art in the 80s in East Germany by Gail Hastings
Sascha Anderson was a spy. This much can be certified by the then Stasi (1) officials who, to quote from a recent documentary made on Anderson (2), considered him to have had the psychological make-up to make him one of the best. What is left uncertified, however, is the effect that Anderson’s infiltration into the East-German sub-culture of the 80s has had on not only the lives that Anderson shadowed with his diaristically notated reports filed at Stasi Headquarters, but on the creative output of these same people and the resulting meaning of the sub-culture that they made manifest.
Also left uncertified is who, exactly, Anderson was then and is now. For the many left scathed by the betraying scratchings of Anderson’s pen, the fictional names he adopted when filling out his reports are nothing compared to the fictions he spun when describing his past to unsuspecting friends. This stage-set past, equipped with backdrops and furnishings depending on the situation or the story needing to be told, has become the type of past for many who now seek their files at Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR, Berlin, Klinerstrasse / Zwieselerstrasse. For it is here that they perhaps discover that some of their past actions were not necessarily derived from decisions of their own making as thought at the time, but rather were actions prescribed by the Stasi who drafted plots and counter plots of ‘dis-action’ and control. The plots were then enacted by Anderson on the stage set of real life where he, himself, participated in each performance as an extra (or leading actor?), amongst unsuspecting collaborators. For those who read the resulting files it must be, in the least, disconcerting to discover the degree of betrayal made evident. Though the reverberations don’t stop here, for discovering the betrayal can’t help but cast serious questions on the value of one’s past actions, both private and public, and the sub-cultural activities that these actions helped render.
Christoph Tannert — Artistic Director at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin — was an event organiser and an active participant in the East-German sub-culture scene in the 80s. Here, he responds to just some of these questions.
First of all, could you briefly describe the mood and political attitudes most prevalent in the East German alternative scene of the 80s — those, especially, centred in the Prenzlauer Berg area?
Christoph Tannert: ‘Prenzlauer Berg’ was, first of all, a way of thinking and only in the second place a reference to a concrete location in East Berlin. Thus, there was also ‘Prenzlauer Berg’ in the Dresden Neustadt and in the Eastern part of Leipzig. Somehow everything was connected. And, to express it in figures, not more than two hundred people participated in it.
What was political about this scene was that art was understood as an active form of self-affirmation and also able to impose itself on non-artistic conditions. Not only as formalism.
Despite all restrictions, observations, spying and preventions, I always found this scene extremely vital and frankly addicted to adventure.
Who was Sascha Anderson, then, and how did you come to meet him?
At that time, Sascha Anderson was a key figure, as a producer and promoter of young writers and a few artists. I first met him in the beginning of the 80s when I was looking for wood engravings of the Dresden artist Ralf Kerbach whom Sascha Anderson counted among his circle of friends.
In what ways was Sascha Anderson involved in the art scene and to what extent was he considered powerful in assisting people with making artistic contacts in the West to further their careers?
Together with other artists and writers who were not published in the GDR state publishing houses, Anderson produced a particular genre of artists’ books. These were unique specimens of graphic works composed of images and lyrics, produced in a small number of copies, which quickly became very sought-after by collectors due to their peculiar expressionist presentation and their cheeky, mostly mysterious texts. Collectors from both the East and West bought these books. Anderson also appeared as a singer with the artists band ‘Vierte Wurzel aus Zwitschermaschine’ and later with ‘Fabrik’, as a means to promote his texts further. This happened approximately between 1982 and 1983.
Did you trust Sascha Anderson?
I had respect for Anderson because he organised things that no one else would have got going in this way. You could not trust anyone in the GDR. Already, by that time, everybody knew that if three people were sitting at a table, one of them at least was spying for the Stasi. But it was only after the Wall came down that we learned exactly how this system of spies and state security had functioned. You could be scared in the GDR, but also live without fear and simply by careful.
How did he assist in your activities?
We interchanged ideas about art and artists, developed ideas and organised exhibitions, concerts and lectures. When Anderson went to the West in the mid-eighties, I continued a series of artists books similar to his.
What was your reaction when you heard that Sascha Anderson had been a spy?
When I heard about Anderson being exposed as an informer for the Stasi, I was hoping that he would use this chance to speak out and to explain himself. Today, I am still waiting for this …
Some people have suggested that the advancement of artistic thought and attitudes in East-Germany at the time was not the result of individuals acting independently from the State, but rather the result of the Stasi’s control of the scene, a control instrumented through Anderson. What are your thoughts on this?
Without Sascha Anderson and the Stasi, the GDR sub-culture would still have existed. It developed not as a pyramidal system but as a network. Anderson could not explain this to the Stasi and it did not understand this until the end of the GDR.
In what way has this knowledge of the Stasi’s undercover involvement in the 80s art scene altered your thoughts on ‘radical’ art and the possibilities for contemporary art today?
I have become sceptical with regard to the status of radical or so-called independent artists. Everybody is always leashed somehow. Art doesn’t change anything. But it can be extremely mobilizing to work in a circle of like-minded people.
Who is Sascha Anderson today?
These days I meet Anderson very rarely, but as far as I know he is working as a scout, editor and designer in the book and publishing business.
notes:
1. The East-German Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatsscherheit).
2. ‘Betrayal’, narrated and directed by Björn Cedeberg in 1996.
The magazine's art advertisements include:
- an exhibition by Monika Brandmeier: Zeichnungen, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; 20 März bis 11 Juli 1999 (inside front cover);
- an exhibition by A.D.A. Donaldson: David Pestorius Gallery, Novalisstrasse 11, D-10115 Berlin; 4–26 June 1999 (page 8);
- an announcement that the Kapinos Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst is moving to Münzstrasse 19, 10178 Berlin-Mitte, and reopening with an exhibition by Sam Durant in September 1999 (page 12);
- an exhibition by Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler: Motion Pictures, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin 25.6.99 – 31.7.99 (Page 12); and
- a band announcement for Robert Forster and Grant McLennan at the Roter Salon, Volksbühne am Roas-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, Tuesday 24 May 1999 (page 13).
The magazine’s content includes:
- ‘Dealing in Secrets’: an interview with Christoph Tannert on the 80s art scene in East-Germany - by Gail Hastings (page 2);
- ‘Before or after the six o’clock news: Ian Anüll’s out of a box’ – by David Pestorius (page 4);
- ‘Some things Drive: listening to David Patton’s new CD’ – by Teresa Hubbard (page 9);
- ‘Choreography-by-proxy: Anna Brag’s two minute stand’ by Farhad Sharmini (page 11); and
- ‘Until Now: The Go-Betweens 78 ‘till 79 The Lost Album’ – by David Pestorius (page 14).
Again I make the point that all people and events included in this magazine are real, even though the magazine and the world to which it belongs is a fiction — an empty space made real by the people who meet in it, although outlined by props and plots. To a certain extent this aspect of the magazine is in an obverse relation to the magazine’s ‘cover story’; where we find a central space filled by a central character who is, himself, a prop — a Stasi plot — outlined by real events and people.
related articles:
mission: untitled (blue) and setting the scene for nobody by Stuart Koop