Birgit Schlieps

1/3 Archiv Volk & Welt, 2007, digital prints, two-part collage, each 50 x 35 cm, installation view in the former GDR-Restaurant »Aktivist« on the occasion of the exhibition Kongress der Futurologen in Eisenhüttenstadt 2007

Kulturpalast, 2003/2007, still picture, digital print wallpapered, (5,98 x 3,80 m) & Rohmodelle, 2003/2005, analog prints framed 15 (15,1 x 21,9 cm) and 7 (20,2 x 30,3 cm), installation view, Berlin 2007

Bassin, 2005/2007, digital print, (130x110cm) from the series Trancemoderne

Tiffany, 2005/2007, digital print, (130x110cm) from the series Trancemoderne

Berlin based urban sculptor, photographer and author Birgit Schlieps deals in her work 1/3 Archiv Volk & Welt with the archive of the Volk & Welt (nation & world) publishing house, which published Soviet and anti-fascist fiction and later also international contemporary fiction, translated into German for the GDR audience. Volk & Welt was founded in 1947 and finished its publishing activities in 2001. The two part collage is made from 1/3 of the actual archive based in the museum of everyday culture of the GDR in Eisenhüttenstadt, featuring the book spines like a geological cross section through the archive.

The installation Trancemoderne deals with the city Aktau that was founded in 1963 as a Soviet modernist model city, drawing people for its nuclear and oil industries from all over the USSR. Now situated in Kazakhstan its inhabitants have to adapt to capitalist relations of production and living adding another architectonic, visual layer to the city.