titre provisoire (Cathleen Schuster and Marcel Dickhage): On wildcat strikes

We are happy to welcome the artists’ collective titre provisoire for a special research talk. Their lecture will present their ongoing research on the wildcat strikes that took place during the workers’ struggles of the 1970s in West Germany. These strikes were initiated by migrant workers and carried out autonomously from the German trade unions. An initial series of strikes in the early 1960s ended with those calling for strikes being arrested and deported. In 1973, the number of strikes hit their peak. In most cases, not only demands like unequal wages were addressed, but also the overall racism, which manifested itself additionally in miserable housing conditions, discrimination through language, harassment by authorities, uncertain residency status, among others. In 1973, a workforce of about 275,000 people in 335 companies had been on strike. Excerpts from two documentaries about the largest strikes of 1973 will be shown. At the same time, we will draw on various theoretical and historical sources to demonstrate how discriminatory practices already existed during an earlier stage of labor migration during the imperial era, and have been applied and persisted ever since.

Cathleen Schuster and Marcel Dickhage work from a research based approach in time-based media, with archives and text/image related. They collaborate as titre provisoire and they live in Berlin. They are alumni of the Whitney Independent Study Program and the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. Recent exhibitions and screenings include Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, Singapore Biennale 2019, the public space of Semmering, Horse&Pony Berlin, D21 Leipzig, Sharjah Art Foundation, after the butcher Berlin, Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol, Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof Hamburg, Berlinische Galerie, GfZK Leipzig, Ludlow 38 New York, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, SAVVY Contemporary, the Kyiv Biennale 2015 and Anthology Film Archives, among others.