Photo: Kerstin-Mlynkec
What was life like for a punk in East Berlin? How did the scene organise itself while threatened by the surveillance state? And what did the music sound like? In this prelude, which consists of an interview on an open stage accompanied by musical examples, Henryk Gericke discusses these questions together with Ronald Galenza. Galenza started playing in the GDR punk band JÄHzorn in 1983.
Three years later he was one of the founders of the independent disco and concert series »X-Mal, MUSIK ZUR ZEIT« on Berlin’s Insel der Jugend, which hosted bands like Sandow, Die Vision, and Ornament & Verbrechen. Today he works as a radio broadcaster, DJ, and author. So yes, he’ll have a lot to say.
This event will take place in German.
About »Too Much Future«
It doesn’t downplay the role of punk in the West to say that in the East, in the GDR, it was a different, absolutely crucial affair. In East Berlin and elsewhere, politics came before pop; young people reacted to scarcity rather than to consumerist hell, and offered resistance against an invasive, dogmatic system. However, involuntarily hopes, demands, and needs made people within the forced collective into outsiders. Today an author, DJ, and curator, Henryk Gericke was a singer in the East Berlin punk band The Leistungsleichen in the early 80s and later put out many publications in the political and artistic underground. In connection with numerous exhibitions and publications he’s co-organised, Gericke now looks for three consecutive festival days at subculture on the other side of the Wall(s), and at the punk movement in particular. This programme focus combines talks, musical talk-performances as »preludes«, a film screening, and a DJ set.