November - December 2023

The Citizen.KANE.Kollektiv are artists from the field of performative and performing arts. For the project "Weisse Elefanten", the Citizen.KANE.Kollektiv explores the history of censorship before 1989 together with, among others, the Romanian theatre REPLIKA.

In the present, in which democracy is acutely jeopardised by right-wing populist parties, an examination of the past is of importance. Censorship as a term is currently being used by right-wing fringes who want to implement it to establish sovereignty in discourse. But what exactly is censorship, how is it applied and enforced, who exactly is it directed against - and above all, what lessons can be learnt 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 theatre makers and experts from Dresden and the surrounding area.

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