Grassroots Glasnost: Experimental Art, Participation, and Civic Life in 1980s East Berlin

Abstract

Abstract This article examines how experimental art staged in East Berlin galleries and city streets from the mid-1970s through the 1980s was used to rethink the relationship between art, social life, and citizenship under socialism. Experimental artists took advantage of the gaps in party control in order to access a second public sphere in which open communication, imagination, and critique were possible—and encouraged. The article situates East Berlin’s experimental practitioners as part of a broader pattern in East-Central Europe in which unconventional art incited a localized grassroots glasnost parallel to top-down reforms emanating from the USSR. These conceptual installations, performances, and actions challenged viewers’ traditional forms of perceiving reality and, thus, the status quo. Moreover, general audiences were often invited to participate in the process of artistic production as a form of collective action. These practices contributed to a spirit of political ferment across East-Central Europe in which more expansive and participatory forms of socialist citizenship were tested, and later contributed to the possibility for revolution. They retained their relevance in the aftermath of revolutionary change and during the postsocialist transformation as artists continued to insist on art fulfilling a social, critical, and public purpose.