Study
04 The Time Lag of Defa-Futurum
Researcher
On April 23, 1975, at Karl Marx University in Leipzig, the East German filmmaker Joachim Hellwig (1932–2014) and scriptwriter Claus Ritter (1929–1995), both initiators and authors of the artistic working group defa-futurum, defended their collectively written practice-based PhD on the “artistic forms for imagining a socialist future by the means of film under specific consideration of the experiences of the working group defa futurum.” Strongly influenced by Hellwig’s antifascist projects and nonfictional documentary practice, defa-futurum demonstrates a specific concern for a Marxist cybernetics with regard to creative thinking, labor, love, and political work. The latter is elaborated in greater detail by engaging with the forgotten writings of the philosopher Franz Loeser. Defa-futurum allowed the idea of film-as-theory to endorse the GDR as a sovereign state—promoting also an East German socialist internationalism—under the conditions of the global Cold War by the means of cinema. By using methods from visual culture and cultural studies to facilitate a decolonizing analysis of defa-futurum’s films, Stasi files, archival material, and original writings, the article aims to argue that decolonizing socialism is necessary in order to break through the Cold War’s binary limits for understanding technopolitics, art, and social realities in the post-1989 world. The case study has been published as a scientific article by Doreen Mende under the same title in Aga Skrodzka, Xiaoning Lu, and Katarzyna Marciniak (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures, 2020.
Terms
- Automation
- Cinema
- DEFA
- Futurology
- German Democratic Republic
- Hellwig, Joachim
- Karl Marx University
- Leipzig
- Loeser, Franz
- Ritter, Claus
Study Materials
- A
- Accra (1)
- agarwal, vinit (7)
- Alda Costa (1)
- Algorithmic cruelty (1)
- Amaro, Ramon (1)
- Anti-fascism (3)
- Archival Material (2)
- Archival metabolism (5)
- Automation (1)
- B
- Berlin (2)
- Bitterfeld-Wolfen Plant (1)
- Black Feminism (4)
- Bombay (1)
- Borges, Sónia Vaz (3)
- Bricks (1)
- Brüggmann, Eva (2)
- C
- Cambodia (1)
- Cap Verde (1)
- Charara, Ghalas (1)
- Chile (2)
- Cinema (3)
- Coding (2)
- Cold War (2)
- Coming together (3)
- Communist Feminism (3)
- Cosmogony (2)
- Cuba (1)
- Cupers, Kenny (1)
- curatorial/politics (3)
- Cybernetic Eye (1)
- Cybernetics (1)
- D
- David A. Mondlane (2)
- Decolonizing Mathematics (1)
- DEFA (2)
- Dhanau (1)
- Diagram (2)
- Diary (2)
- Digital image (2)
- Digitized Image (3)
- Drawing (1)
- Dresden (1)
- Dresden State Art Collection (1)
- Dubai (1)
- E
- East-Berlin (4)
- Eberswalde (1)
- Educational Internationalism (4)
- Eshun, Kodwo (1)
- Evolutionary Cybernetics (1)
- Exchange (1)
- F
- Failure of denacification (2)
- Film (3)
- Film Institute Babelsberg (2)
- film poster (2)
- Friendship (1)
- Futurology (1)
- G
- German Democratic Republic (5)
- Gewinner, Malin (1)
- Ghostworker (1)
- Giletti, Laure (1)
- Ginga Eichler (1)
- Green Revolution (1)
- Guinea-Bissau (1)
- H
- Harlem (2)
- Havanna (2)
- Hellwig, Joachim (2)
- Historiography (2)
- Hwang, Yoo-Young (1)
- I
- India (2)
- Inhabitability (1)
- Internationalism (1)
- Interracial Love (2)
- Intersectionality (3)
- J
- Jaipur (1)
- K
- Karl Marx University (1)
- Konior, Bogna (1)
- Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik (1)
- Kritsouk, Lyosha (1)
- L
- Latin America (1)
- Leipzig (2)
- Lem, Stanisław (1)
- Liminality (1)
- Loeser, Diana (1)
- Loeser, Franz (5)
- London (3)
- M
- Mali (1)
- Mankew V. Mahumana (2)
- Map (1)
- Maputo (2)
- März, Moses (1)
- Maulén de los Reyes, David (1)
- Mende, Doreen (7)
- Micro-history (4)
- Moatize (1)
- Mongolia (1)
- Montage (1)
- Müller, Karl, Erich (1)
- N
- Nepal (1)
- New Dehli (1)
- Nienhoff, Lea Marie (3)
- O
- Oral History (1)
- Orality (1)
- ORWO color stock film (1)
- P
- Painting (1)
- Pakistan (1)
- Palitana in Gujarat (2)
- Paper (2)
- Peekskill (2)
- Peter Stobinski (1)
- Photography (6)
- Planetary (1)
- Poland (1)
- Poster Art (1)
- Potsdam (1)
- Precast Concrete Architecture (1)
- Programming (1)
- R
- Raju, C.K. (1)
- Rauh, Hans-Christoph (1)
- Ritter, Claus (2)
- Robeson, Eslanda Goode (3)
- Robeson, Paul (3)
- S
- São Tomé and Príncipe (1)
- Schmidt, Elisabeth (1)
- Schwerin (1)
- Sequence (1)
- Sharhaj (1)
- Social History (1)
- Socialist Feminism (3)
- Solaris (1)
- Solidarity (1)
- Sound (3)
- South Korea (1)
- Sri Lanka (1)
- Steel (1)
- Sunder, Aarti (3)
- Supreme Court (3)
- T
- Technogenesis (2)
- Technopolitics (4)
- Tema (1)
- Textile map (1)
- Theory-Organism (1)
- Translation (3)
- Typewriting (3)
- U
- Ulanbataar (1)
- University of Economics in Berlin-Karlshorst (1)
- V
- Vé-Réveillac, Océane (1)
- Video (1)
- Video essay (3)
- Vitrines (1)
- von Foerster, Heinz (1)
- Vora, Chetna (6)
- W
- Wallpaper (1)
- Wark, McKenzie (1)
- White, Charles (1)
- Wolf-Rehfeldt, Ruth (1)
- Worldmaking (4)
- Writing (a) Community (2)
- X
- Xeno-technology (1)