***Archival video of this segment is available here.***
TreuhandTechno is an artistic project by the theater collective Panzerkreuzer Rotkäppchen (PKRK). It explores the connection between techno and the Treuhand in East Germany in the 1990s, a period in which two thirds of former GDR companies were liquidated by the Treuhand. Workers were abruptly laid off and machines shut down. What did the children and grandchildren of the strikers do? They met in the closed factories to dance to the rhythms of a new machine music—techno. Dismissal, trauma, unemployment in one world; speechless music, delirium and booming bass in the other. Thirty years later, the experience of social transformation in East Germany is more relevant than ever, with both platform capitalism and the Covid-19 pandemic posing new challenges. Against this backdrop, platform co-ops aim to provide an alternative vision of society, one that builds on the experiences of cooperatives and worker self-management. In their performance, TreuhandTechno will draw linkages between yesterday and today—a perfect artistic endeavour to close the first day of the conference!
