bildstörung

2008 – 2011

In their joint project Bildstörung (image interference) the Leipzig performance artist and author Kurt Mondaugen and the Berlin-based volksbild archive for anonymous private photographs of the artist Susanne Wehr design textual repurposing und reworking strategies of anonymous slide collections. German family and holiday memory pictures from the last 50 years are made available to the public and at the same time subjected to literary-performative processes of alienation.

Bildstörung 7 (Image interference 7)

Private Story

And then we returned from holiday, in the Congo Patrice Lumumba was shot and Nikita Khrushchev took off his shoe at the UN General Assembly and slammed it on the table and said something embarrassing and the wall was built and then came the Cuban Missile Crisis. And in the GDR Christa Wolf wrote Divided Heaven and then Grandma Helene died and we went on holiday again. And Aunt Helga married that sailor from Lübeck for the second time. And Adenauer resigned and there was the Six Day War in the Middle East and we returned from holiday and the next James Bond came out and Jürgen Habermas called Rudi Dutschke a left-wing fascist and Ho Chi Minh died and Nixon had to resign because of Watergate and in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge came to power and we went on holiday again and the Dead Kennedys sang to it: Holiday in Cambodia and Uncle Heinz in Kiel went bankrupt with his forwarding company and committed suicide, Heiner Müller wrote Hamletmaschine and we returned from holiday and Ayatollah Khomeini also returned to Iran from his exile in Paris, because the Shah had been overthrown. And the Sandinistas overthrew Somoza and Uncle Max fell off the garden ladder in Berlin-Lichterfelde and broke his collarbone and we went on holiday again. And in the East some SS-20 missiles were stationed and someone made the NATO double-track decision in Brussels and Breshnev died somehow still and we returned from holiday. And Ronald Reagan had that Contra Affair on his back and Mikhail Gorbachev had the war in Afghanistan and the next James Bond came out and he played in Afghanistan and Aunt Rita died and Aunt Helga married for the third time this sailor from Lübeck, this time in a blue dress. And we went on holidays again and came back, when Ronald Reagan suddenly called Michael Gorbachev his friend or vice versa. And the wall came down. And we went on holidays to the East and saw Aunt Monika again after all these years and Saddam invaded Kuwait. And Boris Yeltsin became an alcoholic and Russian president and Heiner Müller died and Ronald Reagan got Alzheimerʼs and we returned from holiday like every year. – Yes, thatʼs how we lived back then, just like that. And all the slides are still there. Until today.