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'Decarbonization Endgame - #2 Zombie Apocalypse 2024’ Digital Collage, 125 x 125 mm, 2024 Fine Art Pigment Print under Acrylic Glass

'Decarbonization Endgame - #1 Darth Coal’ Digital Collage, 125 x 125 mm, 2024 Fine Art Pigment Print under Acrylic Glass

'Decarbonization Endgame - #3 Count Saxo’ Digital Collage, 125 x 125 mm, 2024 Fine Art Pigment Print under Acrylic Glass

The final battle of decarbonization is being fought in Saxony. In the course of efforts to achieve self-sufficiency since the 1920s, the Sorbian settlement area was massively changed and indigenous culture and language were eradicated by the excavation of villages. In the GDR, this process was intensified because the massive expansion of power plants meant that thousands of people were settled to operate these plants. Although it had been clear since the early 1980s (through the environmental movements) that there must also be a transformation from fossil fuels to sustainable energy production in the former GDR, the need for this after reunification was deliberately concealed and slowed down by politicians. Germany has been a pioneer in green technologies since the 1980s. Conservative politics and large industrial interests have prevented a social, ecological and economic transformation under the guise of job security and are still doing so.

The election results of 2024 compared to 2019 prove the success of reactionary strategies of sacrificing climate and the environment for profit. Despite the progressive energy policy of the current federal government in the global crisis and the availability of sustainable energy production, energy prices are rising while fossil energy companies are making surpluses. Disinformation campaigns financed by the advocates of the fossil world and a populist Saxon state policy are bearing fruit - even with the risk that fascist parties will take power in Germany - just to be able to operate a fossil business model for as long as possible. These campaigns are now so successful that even young people who will experience the destruction of the planet are also voting for right-wing politics. Those responsible for this catastrophic development in politics and the economy can be named and are not hiding.

Our global competitors such as China and the USA are now benefiting from the green technologies developed in Germany. The massive shift to the right and the fascistization in East Germany and the associated hatred of green, but left-wing politics in particular are the politically desired result. Saxony in particular is thus becoming the epicenter of this culture war of old white men who are burning the world. The Prime Minister of Saxony is doing everything he can to discredit the Green partners in the coalition and the traffic light coalition and is providing populist arguments for the right-wing spectrum in a transparent manner in order to stop the long overdue transformation of the entire region. This is particularly effective in the Lusatian lignite mining area, as there is a will for a sustainable transformation in the Central German lignite mining area through the chemical industry based there, which has recognized the advantages of a less fossil-based world from a purely economic perspective.

'Monumente sollen stehen oder nichts - Ernst-Thälmann-Schacht’ Digital Collage, 375 x 375 mm, 2024 Fine Art Pigment Print under Acrylic Glass, Black Aluminium Art Box

With a few exceptions, the history of the places in the GDR that honor the communist workers' leader Ernst Thälmann is a history of cultural appropriation. The Ernst-Thälmann-Schacht (Vitzthumschacht) in Hübitz in the Mansfelder Land is in the immediate vicinity of the Otto-Brosowski-Schacht (Paulschacht). The mine was named after the communist Otto Brosowski from Gerbstedt, whose wife hid the Krivoy Rog flag from the Nazis. Thälmann himself also visited the miners in the Mansfeld region during the global economic crisis.

The Mansfelder Land with its copper mining since around 1200 and the mining company named after it (1852 – 1995) plays an important role in the history of Germany and especially the GDR for economic independence. The Mansfeld Combine, which was responsible for copper mining and was very large given its importance, was actually a strong driver of innovation in the GDR with consumer goods production, development for the Soviet space program and even a powerful computer in competition with the state-owned Robotron Combine. In 1979, the Mansfeld Combine began alignment work for the discovered copper slate deposits near Spremberg in the Sorbian settlement area.

Mansfeld's copper mining had such an impact that even the most important writer in the GDR, Franz Fühmann, decided to work in the mining industry in 1974 so that he could write his magnum opus and failed. His novel fragment “In the Mountain” is the document of this failure. Franz Fühmann often stayed in Upper Lusatia and in particular with fellow writers based in Wuischke on the north side of the Mountain Czorneboh (Slavic for Black God).

These loosely connected strands form the framework for the series “50 Years of Neue Sorbische Kunst,” also because they make it possible to include the work series “Black God” and “Monuments Should Stay or Nothing.”

Franz Fühmann is the connecting element in the narrative of the artist collective 'Neue Sorbische Kunst', which has been active since 1974. What we know so far is that the collective met in 1973 at the 'X. Weltfestspiele der Jugend und Studenten' and came together on New Year's Eve 1973/74 in a previously unknown location at the foot of the Mountain Czorneboh in the first hours of January 1st 1974 founding the 'Neue Sorbische Kunst'.