Trousers made of flag fabric, wedding dresses made of lace curtains or sweat jackets made of molton? The limited range of clothing available in the GDR made the fashion-conscious inventive. Some people became creative and knew exactly how to create the desired item of clothing themselves. For a market café at Treffpunkt ostZONE, we are looking for participants who sewed professionally or privately in GDR times and want to tell us about it.
Do you still remember your first pair of rivet trousers (jeans)? Did you perhaps commission them “under the table” from the contract workers from Vietnam or Mozambique? Or did you design and tailor your own summer collection of chic blouses, fashionable skirts and dresses?
Exchange personal stories and memories over coffee and biscuits! Together with former Vietnamese contract workers, many of whom worked in the Volkseigene textile companies and some of whom still run their own textile shops today, we will chat about tailoring in the GDR era.
01. October, 12:00 – 14:00 | Market café on the topic: „Tailoring and sewing: GDR – today “
a&o hostels (Raum Bastei, Strehlener Straße 10, 01069 Dresden)
A special highlight awaits you: “We are bringing an original VEB sewing machine.” Cao The Hung, a former contract worker from Vietnam, has mobilised all his contacts to make memories of the GDR era possible. The machine will be used to show how trendy studded trousers (jeans) used to be produced. Original GDR rivets will be brought along. The artist Xenia Gorodnia will show anyone interested how biographical experiences can be “sewn up”.
At Treffpunkt ostZONE we ask and remember together. In the exchange – between generations and cultures about the past and present – every life journey is taken seriously.
Treffpunkt ostZONE. Remember and shape
The project enables people with and without a migration background to exchange information about life during the GDR era across generations and to deal with their own biographies.
Period
05.2021-12.2021
Contact
info@kulturaktiv.org
Project participants
Dr. Verena Böll (Project management)
Elena Pagel (Artistic management)
Dresden artists as well as contemporary witnesses and experts
Cooperation partners
MEDEA International – FMGZ MEDEA e.V.
Omse e.V.
Johannstädter Kulturtreff e.V.
Ausländerrat e.V.
Prohlis ist bunt
Deutsch-Vietnamesischer Kulturverein-Dresden e.V.
riesa efau. Kulturforum Dresden e.V.
Frauenstadtarchiv / FrauenBildungsHaus Dresden e.V.
Gedenkstätte Bautzner Straße Dresden / Erkenntnis durch Erinnerung e.V.
Städtische Bibliotheken Dresden
Volkshochschule Dresden e.V.
Supported by
The project is supported by the House of Resources Dresden