• Sat 04 05 – Sun 30 06 2019 •
TONSPUREN ZUR LINKEN MEMORY STATION

By ACHIM LENGERER in collaboration with guests and activists


OPENING HOURS:
Tue, Wed, Sun: 11:00 – 18:00
Thu, Fri, Sat: 11:00 – 20:00
The exhibition is closed from 19 to 23 6 2019.

Venue: Rekorder II, Scharnhorststraße 68, 44147 Dortmund
Free admission


From 24 to 30 August 1973, Turkish, Italian and left-organised German workers went on strike at the Ford plant in Cologne-Niehl. The reason for the work stoppage was the dismissal of 300 Turkish workers who had returned late from a four-week-long summer holiday. In previous years it had been possible to make up for such absences through additional shifts, but this time the workers involved were dismissed without notice.
The Ford strike is just one of many examples of how politically active leftist migrants and West German left-leaning groups fought for workers’ rights in the 1970s and ’80s in Cologne and the Ruhr region and in doing so, networked between cities and organised in highly diverse groups. These complex histories of radical left-wing and solidarity politics are hardly present in the consciousness of German mainstream society. Tonspuren zur Linken traces these histories as an ongoing, collaborative work in progress.

The project space Rekorder II, which is run by an interdisciplinary collective of artists and culture producers in the Nordstadt district of Dortmund, functions for the duration of the Memory Station project as a place for multi-media installations and as a sound recording studio, where further interviews take place. This happens alongside a younger generation of activists as well as in collaboration with the visitors to Rekorder II. As the collection of Tonspuren zur Linken continues to grow, the interviews are simultaneously uploaded to the website memorystations.online, coming together into one comprehensive, collective mix tape of oral history.

In cooperation with Urbane Künste Ruhr