Collaboration with Swagata Bhattacharyya and Arijit Bhattacharyya. Site-specific installation at Bezirksverwaltung für Staatssicherheit Leipzig, 2021.
1989 was the year of the Peaceful Revolution that led to the fall of the Iron Curtain. In 2021 we saw how public life was going through a period of drought in many parts of the world due to the global pandemic. Nevertheless, people were taking to the streets in many countries. Past and present are entangled and condition the future. But the future also influences the now. Speculation is a means of protest by revealing the prospects of the years to come. How do we imagine civil resistance in 2053, which is the time between the two mentioned dates projected into the future? Drawing inspiration from the genre of social science fiction, Ghosts of a Protest explores the inherent utopian qualities of protest in a dystopian future. It seeks to illustrate fragments of history/fiction using animated videos and objects-based installation. In this way the former Stasi building in Leipzig that witnessed the protests 32 years ago becomes a site of inception. The physical space layers the traces of the historical past and the speculative future in the reality of the presence.
Bewässerung (Die neue Plantage), [Irrigation (The New Plantation)], Durational performance, 2023, Potsdam. Image: Marcus Große.