A History of Violence

Kai Ziegner

Through experimental writing and conceptual photography, my PhD uses my own biography to investigate the consequences of societal transformation processes in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The focus is on the period of regime change known as the »Wendezeit« in the late 1980's to the early 1990's in East Germany. To date, this subject has been analysed primarily by scholars of history and cultural sciences, while approaches to this topic by artistic researchers are still rare. With my research, I would like to reveal causes for the outbreaks of violence that accompanied this radical shift. The objective of my PhD is thus to submit critical testimony to the silence about seldom-discussed side effects of the transformation during and after the turnaround which Germans call the »Wende«. Based on the example of (my own) individual history, it demonstrates how authoritarian regimes and structures impacted on three generations of citizens, and how they affected the individuals. Throughout an experimental narrative, outbreaks ofsenseless violence are treated as side effects of disruptive transformation processes, just as are ambivalent situations in which actors of social change recognise themselves to be simultaneously victims and perpetrators of violent incidents. Since personal memories and historical documents served as the basis of this work, the central challenge of my artistic research was to carve out generalisable elements from individual examples, and to try out and experiment with various textual and photographic formats to find an adequate way to present the research material. Important sources of inspiration for this process included works like Alexander Kluge’s »Lebensläufe« (‘Case Histories’), Primo Levi’s »Ist das ein Mensch?« (‘If This Is a Man’), Walter Benjamin’s »Denkbilder« [Thought-Images], Klaus Theweleit’s »Männerphantasien (‘Male Fantasies’), Georges Didi-Huberman’s »Bilder trotz allem« (‘Images in Spite of All’), Claude Lanzman’s documentary film »Shoah«, and W.G. Sebald’s novel »Austerlitz«. The result of my research is an experimental book that portrays the multidimensional nature, polyphony and complexity of the subject, and offers the readers an opportunity to deal with the material in the way they desire, and perhaps to make it useful for their own work and research.

First I see the snow. How it frames the site. A hint of ice on the glass. Cold shadow. Behind, the monastery in sunlight. The bus stop does not belong here. Too modern, too rational. Nothing that could stand up to the centuries. Same goes for the roadway, too fresh and smooth. Back on the right, a bright panel of fence. The lane markings show the way. The demesne pushes its way into the picture on the left. Mighty and as old as the hills. Nothing fits together here. I have nothing against the place. But it’s inside of me. Sticking in my mind. When I close my eyes, I see his. It’s cold.

We took a trip with our two sons and my father to a medieval market at C. Abbey northeast of B. It was a sunny Easter day shortly after my 41^st birthday; there were lots of visitors out and about on site of the ruined monastery. We grabbed a bite to eat, bought a few small gifts, and were making our way back home. At a bus stop in front of the ruin, a young man in black jeans and a grey hooded sweatshirt approached us. My wife was walking on my left, I was in the middle, and my father was walking along the street on my right. My wife and I had our twins in baby carriers strapped to our chests. When the man was right in front of us, he suddenly crossed over to where my wife was walking. Out of the corner of my eye I saw how he clenched his left fist and grimaced. When he passed my wife, he elbowed her in the side. She screamed out in pain, and since I had not seen exactly what he had done, I asked my wife what had happened. She yelled that the man had injured her. We ran after the assailant and stopped him right beyond the bus stop. I tried to hold him to account. He began insulting and badmouthing us as strangers in town. I threatened to hit him. As a result he pulled his smartphone out of his pocket, started filming us, threatened to call his lawyer and sue us because we had forced him off the sidewalk. I called him a coward. If I had not had strapped one of our two children to my chest, I would have hit him. Whenever I come past that bus stop, I remember his triumphant gaze.

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Bus stop at C. Abbey, young man goes after U., rams his elbow into her side, insults us as non-natives, our children and my father are with us, age 41

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