Invitations given and received

We’re right in the middle of everyday life in two villages. For just a few days, routine is suspended and provides space for the unusual.

In the beginning, we asked ourselves how could we contribute to this Biennale. The topic of real(work) did not seem to provide the focus for our project. We did not think it was possible to comment on a complex issue such as >work

The relative confidence with which it is possible to work as an artist in the city dwindles during a walk on the dike.

We decided to participate in the Biennale because it is situated in the communities of Werkleitz, Tornitz and Grube-Alfred. To ask for the particular cultural >identities

So we extended the invitation to the inhabitants of Werkleitz and Tornitz hoping to create a "Biennale of Werkleitz and Tornitz inhabitants", in which the role of culture at these places could be represented.

At the same time we undertook research on the artconcept of socialist realism and culture within sites of production We realised that in the GDR the connection between art and labour had already been raised as a central issue before.

Cultural Producers: Plate/Willms

The showing in the community auditorium of Tornitz and Werkleitz during the Biennale has three parts:

• our work in Werkleitz and in Tornitz
• the vision of culture at these place
• the history of the connection between art and labour in the GDR we have synthesized the work of these past months and are now showing the results of our research in the community auditorium.

A diagram and photographs document the process of our work. Additionally there are texts on the art of the public, on participation and on our previous modes of practice Few members of the local youth club had the idea, to introduce their party-culture and the practice of a DJ. Videos are shown, made up from films videotaped by the adolescents during parties in Werkleitz, Dessau and Schonebeck. There is an interview with DJ Sven B. from Barby on Techno, DJ-ing, work, leisure and DT64. Also texts on DJ-culture and an interview with Ralf from the youth club on parties, techno, clothes and the right locations.

Culture in the factory in the GDR is investigated in interviews with Otto Plonnies and Ernst Finster, using the example of the Kulturhaus (House of Culture) of the Niederschachtofenwerk (former local shaft kiln factory) in Calbe. At the same time, there are photographs of the Kulturhaus in its present state as well as during the events it housed during GDR-days. Additionally, there is a small archive with material and texts on this topic.

Cultural Producers

on Thursday, 6 July 2000 at 19.30 in the community auditorium

• Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz (The Naked Man on the Sports Ground)
• A film on the sculptor Kemmel and his work. Some of his pieces are not well received by the locals. A relief. for example, which he created for a village, disappears in a storage room. The factory worker Hermes, whom he asks to be his model for a portrait, is initially not interested.
• Defa film by Konrad Wolf, 1974. 97 minutes

...on Friday, 7 July 2000, at 19.30 in the community auditorium Kulturbeutel (the german expression for sponge bag, a self-mocking pun on the range of subjects for which the term 'culture‘ applies) Jelka Plate and Malte Willms introduce ,cultural producers‘.

DJ Culture

DJ Sven (Barby/Werkleitz) will set up his turn tables and will answer (and discuss) questions in an open discussion on DJ