Das Jahr 1990 freilegen oder: Aufführung eines Buches Exposing the Year 1990 or: Displaying a book

The installation contains contributions by Jan Caspers, Christiane Eisler/ Silke Geister, Gerhard Gäbler, Anselm Graubner, Martin Jehnichen, Harald Kirschner, Alexander Kluge, Andreas Rost and Wolfgang Schwärzler.

If we compare the years 1989 and 1990, it is striking how different their presence is in our collective memory. Even though thirty years have past, most people can quickly recall 1989 and narrate the sequence of events that autumn, often condensing them to a few highly dramatic weeks. By contrast, 1990 seems like a blind spot. Recollections of a year when events came so intensively are hard to make, especially when they have since left ambitions unfulfilled and wounds still open.

The starting point of the exhibition »1990 exposed« is a book project by the Leipzig-based publishers Anne König and Jan Wenzel. Various aspects of 1990 are put under scrutiny in search of their relevance for today. Contents from the book are translated into the exhibition space: Images and voices are combined into hubs of 1990. Visitors are invited to absorb the events of that time and their effects on today’s society and to compare them with their own memories. It is a mistake to assume that any of these events are really over. In order to read the present, you have to start at 1990.