HOFFNUNGSWERKSTATT 2: Nachhall eines Bruchs. Ost-West-verhältnis als offene Wunde

In the organizer's words:

Discussion as part of the FOCUS ON: TIPPING POINTS series
with Luisa Bäde, Georg Diez and Ming Poon

In his new book "Kipp-Punkte" (Tipping Points), journalist and author Georg Diez diagnoses the shift to the right in East Germany as a consequence of the failures of reunification: the loss of political self-efficacy has led to a generation-spanning experience of illness that makes parts of the population particularly susceptible to authoritarian ideologies. A tipping point at which history could have taken a different course. What does it take today to prevent the missed historical opportunities from being perpetuated - and for the relationship between East and West to be reconciled?

Director Luisa Bäde, who was born in Gera (Thuringia) in 1988, and choreographer and activist Ming Poon, who has been living in a village in Saxony-Anhalt for ten years, take an artistic approach. In the network Nachwendekinder and in the performance OSTBEGEGNUNGEN - Nachwendekinder alive and kicking! , Luisa Bäde and other artists with Eastern perspectives initiate processes of coming to terms with the (post-)reunification period through exchange at eye level. Ming Poon, on the other hand, invites artists with an Asian background to his farm in Bräsen/Coswig (Anhalt) to create participatory art projects together with the villagers. With Georg Diez, the two discuss how new forms of solidarity-based action can emerge today from the open ruptures of the fall of communism.

Duration: 90 minutes
Language: German and English (with interpreting), German Sign Language (DGS)
Speakers: Georg Diez, Luisa Bäde and Ming Poon
Moderation: N.N.
Curation and concept: Dandan Liu

Georg Diez is a journalist, author, curator and fellow at ProjectTogether and the Max Planck Society, where he researches questions of democratic innovation. He writes regularly for Zeit Online and foreign media and the Substack Überleben im 21. Jahrhundert. He recently published his book "Kipppunkte. From the promises of the nineties to the crises of the present".

Ming Poon works with applied choreography and uses it as a tool to question, disrupt and reorganize the social and political relationality of the body in time and space. He is particularly interested in activating the potential of marginalized bodies and using choreographic strategies involving decolonization, vulnerability, care, queerness and failure. He founded the Asian Performing Artists Lab (APAL) and is a founding member of United Networks gUG.

Luisa Bäde born 1988 in Gera, multimedia artist, graduate of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne with distinction. Her works move in hybrid participatory forms at the interface between the documentary and the performative. She has been working interdisciplinary with film, performance and bodywork since 2022 in various formats on the Eastern socialization of her generation and co-founded the @netzwerk_nachwendekinder. In 2025, she realized the multimedia performance "OSTBEGEGNUNGEN - Nachwendekinder alive and kicking!"

Hoffnungswerkstatt 2 is realized in cooperation with Impulse Festival für Performance, Theater & Tanz, NRW KULTURsekretariat.

The series is funded by Kunststiftung NRW, GLS Treuhand and Aktion Mensch.