In autumn 1989, many Leipzig citizens lost patience with the GDR. Within weeks, they brought down a forty-year-old state apparatus resistant to change by rallies. Now their patience is tested again: In 2008, the German Bundestag promised the “City of Heroes” of the Peaceful Revolution a monument. Planning has been going on and on … Leipzig bears the waiting with equanimity; after all, it was not idle in the meantime. Right after reunification, the citizenry took charge of its culture of remembrance with such vigour that the monuments are piling up today. Looking up to the crown of the palm tree of the Nikolai Column, one had better take care not to step on a commemorative plaque, fall into a commemorative fountain or bump into a commemorative bell.
Classicist? Figurative? Abstract? What is the formal language a city chooses to tell itself its own history while it is practically still happening? Locals and newcomers roam the current Leipzig collection of monuments, a man ties his shoelaces on the big toe of the bronze sculpture “Step of the Century”. Do people think about what monuments give them to think about? The subtly framed and laconically presented impressions of the city are intermingled not only with the trademarks and emblems of lived urbanity, but also with the voices of local cultural delegates. They are thinking: about the pros and cons of accelerated remembrance.

Lazy and yet insistent, summer knocks on the doors of a Berlin trailer park. Right next to the busy Ostkreuz intersection, this settlement stands in the way of the hectic hustle and bustle of the capital. A green oasis. This summer, among the plants and trees in full bloom and fruit, wild shrubs and lovingly improvised dwellings, Aalo, Jone, Royce, Noah, Kï, Neo, Marlek and Steffen must begin to say goodbye to their cozy home. Liberated from the heteronormative conventions of society, the Mollies collective has for years lived a queer-feminist counter lifestyle here.
Dane Komljen manages with great calm to make this hard-won free space tangible, to capture it as a momentum pointing beyond its own duration – even though the eviction has been long in coming. Building cranes rise to the sky behind the green walls, sounds of demolition come closer, the rattling of trains, the sirens of ambulances mingle with the busy humming of the many insects. What lies in store for the inhabitants is left open. But autumn is bound to come and when the leaves fall, the site will fall victim to the city’s development plans. Another space of possibility for alternative lifestyles disappears.