Citizen.KANE.Kollektiv
November - December 2023
The Citizen.KANE.Kollektiv are artists from the field of performative and performing arts. For the project WEISSE ELEFANTEN (AT), the Citizen.KANE.Kollektiv explores the history of censorship before 1989 together with, among others, the Romanian theater REPLIKA.
Given the acute threat to democracy posed by right-wing populist parties today, it is imperative to examine the past. Censorship as a term is currently being used by right-wing fringes who want to use it to establish sovereignty in discourse. But what exactly is censorship, how is it applied and implemented, against whom exactly is it directed – and above all, what lessons can be learned from the history of real censorship?
By searching for experiences with authoritarian regimes in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Romanian Socialist Republic (RSR), the collective examines structures of oppression in art and attempts to learn methods, strategies and tricks from them. For wherever the freedom of art is restricted, creative resistance arises. This resistance is to be brought from the past into the present. During their research in Dresden, Citizen.KANE.Kollektiv interviewed theater makers and experts from Dresden and the surrounding area.