Sven Johne/ Sebastian Orlac, Weiße Gewalt / White Storm (Source Material), 2020

02. Luftstreitkräfte

„Air forces bring GDR citizens home.
249 citizens of the German Democratic Republic, who had been surprised by snow and cold in the East and Poland and had been waiting for their return in Warsaw since 30.12.1978, returned to Berlin in the course of yesterday on board aircraft of the air force of the National People’s Army. This was announced to ADN by Dr. Klaus Henkes, Deputy Minister of Transport of the GDR and Director General of Interflug. In addition, according to Dr. Henkes, numerous Scandinavian citizens who were prevented from continuing their journey on the Baltic Sea after the ferry service was discontinued, were taken to their home countries in Interflug aircraft. Comrade Henkes thanked the crews for their extraordinary commitment.“

This week, Sven Johne presents six videos as a sneak peek into his new work in progress: a work about the snow catastrophe on the island of Rügen which happened in the winter of 1978/1979.

“These films are not works of art, but only a filmed collection of the material for a photo-text work I’m currently developing with Sebastian Orlac. The work is about the snow catastrophe on the island of Rügen in 1978/79 — the place where I was living then — and the reflection of this state of emergency today. A contemporary witness tells a child about the crisis and he talks about the “heroism“ of his generation. The core of this work is about „masculinity“ and „defensiveness“ — or rather the tradition of these constructed and questionable self-attributions… The six small videos, however, only show the source materials for the work: a lot of photos from the press published in 1978/79 and the newspaper articles read by the children. It is interesting that we talk about a snow catastrophe in times of global warming. My son at the age of nine has seen the snow only once in Berlin.” — Sven Johne