GUESTiculations: Out-of-homeness as a survival strategy

Written by Tihana Bertek

Being a guest is a paradoxal position: it is a “state of temporariness” in which, although invited and treated with respect, we know we do not belong to, that we are always leaving; or, “I know that where I am right now is not permanent.” At the SC Gallery (Zagreb, October 14-29), Margareta Kern’s exhibition deals with precisely this issue. Entitled GUESTisculations, it represents the newest embodiment of the artist’s multidisciplinary project GUESTS that she has been running for several years now, covering the mass work migrations from SFRY to Germany during the 60’s and 70’s.

Kern, herself exposed to the (im)migrant experience (born in Croatia, but has lived in London for almost 20 years), is strongly focused on the undocumented history of the women emigrants, creating an archive of intimate stories in order to trigger memories and encourage alternative readings of history. In opposition to the typical image of the ‘Gastarbeiter’, are the women from Yugoslavia that represented majority of the work force in electronics factories in Western Berlin during the early 70’s. Although most of them planned to stay for only a few months or years, many of them are still living and working in Germany, still feeling like foreigners or guests.

The exhibition at the SC Gallery is set up as an archival installation; a layered and interactive whole made out of versatile materials that keep evolving through the dialogue with the visitor. For instance, by choosing and changing the projection foils, the visitor can read letters or even go through photographs from private albums of the ‘Gastarbaitern’. The possibility of interaction with the material and using ‘outdated’ equipment are certainly a special thrill. There is also a short video about Chancellor Willy Brandt’s visit to Yugoslavia in 1973. To mark the occasion, Brandt planted a tree in the Park of Friendship in Belgrade that Kern puts on display as a big photograph of the park with Brandt’s tree pointed out. At the gallery’s attic, we can watch a film by Krsto Papić Special Trains (1972), where the director talks to workers on their way to Germany on a train specifically organised to travel to München every Tuesday (it is interesting to note that with the tendency of the whole exhibition to ‘dig out’ the female side of the migration story, how Papić’s film mostly features men).

The central element is a two-channel video installation based on transcripts of interviews that Kern conducted with the immigrants in Berlin. The interviews have the form of ‘verbatim theatre’ – a type of documentary theatre where the performance is built on actual statements. On the first channel, we follow the stories of four women, all of whom are played by the same person, actress Adna Sablyich, using a minimum of means: change of clothes and hair style, gesticulations, mimic and speech. With such a method – mediation of personal experience – we are faced with an astonishing, and somewhat alienating mix of documented and scripted. Even though the actress’s tranformations are stunning, the video does not manage to convince us in the authenticity of the performance, which is further amplified by brief, awkward, Brechtian pauses and intermittent comments and questions by the artist. Kern does not hide the fact of putting up a fictitious framework; on the contrary, there is a blackboard on the other channel on which the artist draws with chalk an object for each of the female workers (that same board, with the drawings completed, stands in the background in the video on the first channel), and the scene is sometimes interrupted with rare archival footage from German factories.

Atmospheric and intimate, this show invites the viewers to become “temporary archivists”, to actively go through the material as much as they like, allowing them to choose the content and explore, and the experience is not lessened by the fact that it requires a significant amount of time and concentration. Kern does not want to make just another archive or collect statistics. The material she brings is narrative, personal and human: immigrants’ stories are presented in a touching and warm way, offering a look into a life as a foreigner, but without being  pathetic. This approach, combined with an interactive, user friendly setup, not only deals with the issues of dominant historiography, but also participates in reactivating memories and deleted histories. Migration is, as cultural theoretician Stuart Hall says, a journey in one direction: there is no home to go back to. Margareta Kern’s project tries to document that exact uncertain, temporary nature of out-of-homeness as identity.