Gastarbeiter 2.0

The exhibition Gastarbeiter 2.0 – Arbeit means Rad is the result of a collaboration between cultural workers who were born in the former Yugoslavia but now live and work in Germany, and vice versa. The German term “Arbeit” and the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian term “rad” both mean “work” or “labor.” The exhibition recontextualizes the term Gastarbeiter (literally “guest worker”) at the intersection of the experience of migration, the precarious position of cultural workers, and the urge to deconstruct contemporary relations of class and production from a postcolonial perspective. The struggles of artists, workers, and (temporary) migrants are made visible without documentary references to the history of temporary employment programs*. The curatorial selection focuses on practices in which questions of work, migration, and everyday life are intertwined with critical perspectives on power relations. The resulting insights are divided into four nuclei: Transfer, Symbiosis, Alienation, and Body.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a rich program of guided tours in German, English and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), performances, a workshop, and a transdisciplinary publication. The outreach program takes accessibility as its main focus, offering guided tours for signers by and for the deaf and hearing impaired (German Sign Language), the blind and partially sighted, and in Leichte Sprache (easy language).

*Gastarbeiter refers to the actual employment program in West Germany between 1955 and 1973. In addition to Yugoslavia, other participating countries included Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, South Korea, Portugal, and Tunisia.