We are celebrating our newest exhibition “Tuntenhaus Forellenhof 1990″ together with the curator, the artists, the SMU-team and you! Join our time travel to gay communism’s short summer on June 30, at 7 PM. The exhibition commemorates the squatted building called Tuntenhaus (queen’s house) in Mainzer Straße 4 and showcases the tender side of activist resistance.
On May 1, 1990, with menacing cries of “Wir sind ein Volk” (We are one nation) and “Deutschland, Deutschland” echoing on the streets of East Berlin, capital of the GDR, a bunch of young Kreuzberg Tunten squat Mainzer Straße 4, a run-down tenement in Friedrichshain. Tuntenhaus Forellenhof quickly grows, with Tunten from East, West, and abroad joining forces to build an anti-patriarchal community full of dreams, utopia and actual projects in their Kiez: playground, the Max Hoelz secondhand bookstore for GDR literature, and, after nightfall, the bar Forelle Blau. But by November 14 that same year, following a 3-day, round-the-clock raging battle, the short summer of gay communism reaches its bitter end, when police raid and evacuate the house (and the entire squatted street).
The exhibition “Tuntenhaus Forellenhof 1990” portrays the collective everyday life of the queer residents, from grocery shopping, cooking, and laundry to fighting off attacks by local Nazis, from roaring parties to political actions. Nor does it hesitate to turn the spotlight on in-house conflicts between East and West, full-time politicos and students, and with the women/lesbians squatting next door. The heart of the exhibition (as of the Tuntenhaus, back then) is the dining room, here reconstructed in loving detail by set designer Bri Schlögel. It includes details true to its time, like roll-your-own tobacco (FRG) and KARO cigarettes (GDR), originals of the pamphlet Besetzerzeitung and a plaster cast of Lenin rallying the Tunten to their next plenary session. The exhibition assembles voices, anecdotes, and relics gathered since 2020 in Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and the USA; contributions from Juliet Bashore, Ronald M. Schernikau, Katrin Rothe, Guy Parente, Ingo Hasselbach, Wolfgang Tilmanns, Hajo Beer and Helga Krenz, among others, invite visitors to observe, touch, and listen.
Programme:
7 PM: Opening at Schwules Museum with speaches by Birgit Boshold, Iris Dankemeyer and Bastian Krondorfer.
from 9:30 PM: Afterparty at Club West Germany (Skalitzerstraße 133).
Line-up: Bahamaas (Melitta Poppe, Cathérine and Fabienne du Neckar), Steffen Nitzel (the good sons), Zenzi Obscure (the little sister from Ingrid Caven), Pünktchen, der Chor der jungen Pioniere (tbc), Vadda Cash (tbc) u.a.
The event will be in German spoken language. The opening will be translated in German sign language. Free entrance.
Curated by Bastian Krondorfer, organized by the Forellenquintett e. V. in cooperation with the SMU, and supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
