Wild Wild East
23 Apr - 05 Jun 2005
Wild Wild EAST 1 - "Cowboys"
Peter Buecheler, Sylvia Chybiak, Wiebke Loeper, Lars Nickel, Eric O'Connell, Philipp von Recklinghausen und Andreas Tauber
Curated by Friedrich von Borries und Torsten Fremer
How much do you know about the cowboys who lived behind the Iron Curtain? Or the Indians of socialist East Berlin? Not many people realize that already in GDR times, under communist rule in East Germany, the east was a secret Wild West. The exhibition series Wild Wild EAST reveals an essentially overlooked aspect of recent everyday culture in Germany: the world of those individuals in the GDR and in post-reunification Eastern Germany who have dedicated themselves to the dream of the Wild West.
Worldwide, cowboys and the Wild West are symbols of freedom, wide open spaces and adventure, and represent a vision of another way of life that is independent, close to nature, rugged and manly. Less familiar is the existence of cowboys and cowgirls in the GDR, where any pro- American attitude was officially forbidden. The Wild West was a secret hobby, disguised and concealed, a subversive, oppositional subculture. This changed with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the gold rush of reunification, East Germany experienced a true Country boom, as the entire east became a “Wild West.”
This exhibition narrates stories of the lonesome cowboys of the GDR, and of those individuals who have found in the “Wild West” a counterworld to the current free market economy. On 500 m2 of exhibition area, curators Friedrich von Borries and Torsten Fremer display original items drawn from the Country scene, as well as documentary works by 7 young German and American artists.
Peter Buecheler, Sylvia Chybiak, Wiebke Loeper, Lars Nickel, Eric O'Connell, Philipp von Recklinghausen und Andreas Tauber
Curated by Friedrich von Borries und Torsten Fremer
How much do you know about the cowboys who lived behind the Iron Curtain? Or the Indians of socialist East Berlin? Not many people realize that already in GDR times, under communist rule in East Germany, the east was a secret Wild West. The exhibition series Wild Wild EAST reveals an essentially overlooked aspect of recent everyday culture in Germany: the world of those individuals in the GDR and in post-reunification Eastern Germany who have dedicated themselves to the dream of the Wild West.
Worldwide, cowboys and the Wild West are symbols of freedom, wide open spaces and adventure, and represent a vision of another way of life that is independent, close to nature, rugged and manly. Less familiar is the existence of cowboys and cowgirls in the GDR, where any pro- American attitude was officially forbidden. The Wild West was a secret hobby, disguised and concealed, a subversive, oppositional subculture. This changed with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the gold rush of reunification, East Germany experienced a true Country boom, as the entire east became a “Wild West.”
This exhibition narrates stories of the lonesome cowboys of the GDR, and of those individuals who have found in the “Wild West” a counterworld to the current free market economy. On 500 m2 of exhibition area, curators Friedrich von Borries and Torsten Fremer display original items drawn from the Country scene, as well as documentary works by 7 young German and American artists.