Memory Activism and the Berlin Wall before and after 1989

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

2024 marks the 35th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the efforts to democratize civil societies in Soviet-dominated states after WWII. Through the lens of memory activism, this panel reevaluates the Wende of 1989—the period of cultural and political transformation in post-socialist societies—by drawing on the interconnectedness of social movements and artistic production in East and West as examples of opposition to complacency and as contested sites of memory.

The three papers examine ways in which groups engaged visual culture and media to grapple with the root causes of social discontent and the failures to activate change, and how the meaning of past legacies has been reframed in the present. Rizo Lenshyn’s paper focuses on official and underground media to examine the provocations that shaped social and state responses to (East) Germany's environmental crisis, and she reflects on how these narratives shape these discourses today. Ivanova’s presentation compares three documentary films from the Wende period to question the promise of 1989 by highlighting the failed attempts of post-socialist communities in the former GDR to deal with fraught legacies. Ward’s paper looks at the city of Dresden as a traumatized cultural memory site and establishes a trajectory of memory activism in which the city’s history from 1945 through the turbulent 1980s until today has been co-opted by the myth-making efforts of Germany’s far-right. All papers scrutinize the hope for liberation in 1989 and open a discussion about the imposed limits and possibilities for future change.

Sub Unit

• Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts

Chair

• Mila Ganeva, Miami U of Ohio

Papers

• Activism, Media, and Environmental Crisis in East Germany: Memories from the Past - Victoria Rizo Lenshyn, DEFA Film Library

• Memory Activism and Remembering Activism in Documentaries about and around 1989 - Mariana Ivanova, U of Massachusetts Amherst

• Nationalist Memory Activism, 1989 and Now: The Continued Case of Dresden - Janet Ward, Stony Brook University

Discussant

• Mila Ganeva, Miami U of Ohio