Co-produced by Askeaton Contemporary Arts and Project Arts Centre, Dublin, a new podcast explores how artists can work with archives, ecology and marginalised histories. These themes form key approaches in the publication wild recuperations. material from below, Dissident Stories between GDR and pOstdeutschland, co-edited by 2020 curator/writer in residence at Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Suza Husse.

Image: The Many Headed Hydra, Shannon Estuary Ritual, 2020

Wild recuperations. material from below is, in Husse’s words, ‘the result of a transdisciplinary research process that brought artists, researchers, writers, curators, archivists, activists, and multiple interlocutors together at the Archive of the German Democratic Republic Opposition in Berlin. The materials gathered there draw a complex picture of individual and collective life worlds that deviated from repressive social norms and of the environmental, feminist, and grassroots democratic practices and radical proposals that took shape in response to the promise and failures of state socialism.’ In the podcast produced during lockdown conditions in Askeaton, Suza introduces particular narratives unearthed by the project, and reflects on the larger cultural contexts where they resonate. Invited speakers digress on over 300 pages of wild recuperations from the perspective of their own practices and research as artists, curators and writers.

Participants: Michele Horrigan, Suza Husse, Emma Wolf-Haugh, Sean Lynch, and Lívia Páldi; Moderation and co-editing: Suza Husse; Recording and sound editing: Nat Schastneva

Listen to the full podcast here.

wild recuperations. material from below. Dissident Stories from the GDR and pOstdeutschland, edited by Elske Rosenfeld and Suza Husse and published by District * School without Center and Archive Books can be purchased here.