This film is the outcome of a research and editing process that spanned over more than four years. In the beginning of 2018, after returning from a residency in Beijing, I decided to stay focused on the (post-)communist East and let my own biographical background directly inform my work. I started with artistic research in the Berlin Archive of the GDR Opposition, in the framework of the exhibition project “wild recuperations. materials from below.” The footage that I used in ES GIBT KEINE ANGST (Afraid Doesn’t Exist)was already found and chosen back then. Some of it came to be included in eclectic videos, combined with additional self-directed recordings, which were screened in various video installations over the following years. Although the film ES GIBT KEINE ANGST doesn’t contain any new material, it could only be finished now.
What did it take to finish it? While my initial approach relied on associating the archival material from the GDR with a toxic waste dump, with a burden that we as a society cannot but would love to get rid of, over time I worked out a deeper, more connected relationship to this past. This was a challenging process, because it involved reintegrating highly condensed memories of violence I myself experienced in the GDR as a child. The collaborative research RESONANZ – Postsocialist Group Improvisation, a long-term participatory project that I had pursued in the meantime, supported and contributed to this integration. Even the musical score of ES GIBT KEINE ANGST was initially compiled by Matti Gajek for our improvisation format, rather than for this film. In the end, various practical, political, and analytical threads combined enabled me to make a new, more emotional edit in which the issue of systematic fear repression, which reigned in the GDR (and beyond), can be addressed as such.
Anna Zett
