• Sat 03 11 – Sun 02 12 2018 •
1985 Perverse Decolonization

With JANEK SIMON

Venue: kjubh Kunstverein e. V., Dasselstraße 75, 50674 Cologne
Free admission

OPENING HOURS:
3 11 – 2 12 2018
Thu: 15:00 – 20:00
Fri: 15:00 – 19:00
Sat / Sun: 14:00 – 18:00

The exhibition is closed on 11 11 2018.

Poland in the 1980s was a country that colonised itself by gradually and unofficially replacing the Communist ideology with a capitalistic one – while still in the garb of socialism and long before the official economic shift. The exhibition 1985 by JANEK SIMON in kjubh Kunstverein looks at this period as reflected in lifestyle magazines, smuggling routes and computer tech, and thus shows how popular culture in Eastern Europe became a vehicle of ideological change.

The exhibition is at once a pop cultural archive, a collection of everyday items and a presentation of artistic installations and objects. One main focus is on archived issues of the Polish magazine Pan – an erotic magazine for men that was published in the 1980s and 1990s by RSW Ruch, the official publishing house of the Communist party. Embedded among photos of barely clad models and articles on pop music and fashion were reports on Wall Street, information on technical innovations like computers, cash machines or cordless phones, and general praise for the bounty of capitalistic progress. At the same time, the magazine included lengthy interviews with functionaries of the Communist party, in which they presented themselves as the face of the future.

The exhibition 1985 is part of the international research project Perverse Decolonization and takes place in the context of the final symposium of this project.

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation