During the 1970s, the artist group Clara Mosch transformed the former socialist model city of Chemnitz, then Karl-Marx-Stadt, in the GDR into an avant-garde happening zone. Silent performances and plenary actions alternated with exuberant art festivals and collaborative works presented in the local Galerie Oben. Through interviews with the protagonists and archival sources, including materials from the Getty Research Institute, filmmaker Sylvie Kürsten sheds light on this extraordinary chapter in East German art history in her new documentary Go Clara Go: The Art of Creative Resistance (Germany, 2025).

Following the screening, filmmaker Sylvie Kürsten will be joined in conversation with curator Isotta Poggi of the Getty Research Institute. Joes Segal, the Wende Museum’s Chief Curator and Director of Programming, will moderate the discussion.

Sylvie Kürsten is an independent cultural journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Berlin. Since 2011, she has produced and directed documentaries navigating the relations between culture and society in former East Germany. In 2016, she won the Grimme-Audience Award for her TV documentary Art and Crime The venus gone astray and has presented her works at major national and international film festivals.

This program is presented in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut and the German Currents Film Festival.

Image: Drachen-Aktion beim Pleinair in Kolkwitz-Rudolstadt © 1986 Lindenau-Museum Altenburg / Archiv Ralf-Rainer Wasse