Nonument Group premiered a new installation entitled German Marks at the Pochen Biennale in Chemnitz. The installation reflects on the collective memory and forgetting of the economic transition in the former DDR between 1989 and 1994. Economic vehicles of identity: products, factory emblems and industrial labels became a means of privatisation and optimisation. In parallel, similarly unequal conversations took place on the subject of a monetary union between East and West. The installation uses the central vehicle of this transition, the Deutsche Mark, and combines it with images of industrial facilities transformed and liquidated by the transitional Treuhand Fund. The magic tricks with coins that take place in the background (isn’t the FIAT monetary system based on trust alone?) are the starting point for a confrontation of views, memories and statements about this rarely mentioned, but for many traumatic, collective process.
In the course of our research, we discovered that archives on this period do not exist or are not accessible. Therefore, part of the installation has become a call for the collection of documents, records, opinions and memories, which will be accessible online.
*Photo Credit: Mark Frost
