Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani

Palast der Republik

PDR – Tanzboden Erinnerungen

Turning object, mixed media, 4 m diameter, 2004

Reconstruction of a dance floor from a youth venue of the former Palast der Republik (East Berlin) from the memory of visitors between 1976 and 1989.
On the basis of memories Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani reconstructed the dance floor of a former youth venue of the Palast der Republik. This reconstruction preceded a number of interviews with previous visitors from East and West Germany of this youth club whose memories were all very different. The work has the insecurities of their transmissions as a subject. The multiple temporalities of time and space evoked in Fischer & el Sani’s work, particularly in the installation’s conflation of past, present and future, engage with the central debates concerning Germany’s unification, and the unfinished process of articulating a shared history.