Chillin' in the GDP

The next day at the museum turned out to be as equally fascinating when I found out that the floor above us was a museum of old sound recording equipment, including a fully functioning recording studio with a bunch of vintage german mixing desks, preamps, microphones, phonographs, you name it.

I asked what the mixing board was used for and I was told that back in the day this desk was actually used as a sound system for a factory during the gold old days of the GDP (communist east Germany).  Factories actually had somebody who would  play music, relay announcements and have messages of national pride and communist propaganda throughout the day. 

Across the hall from the sound equipment exhibit was an exhibition of old computers, calculators and computing machines. Some awesome looking stuff. Some of it was steampunked out like it's name was Joel Tacorda.

this typewriter is steamed out like Tacorda

At one time, this was an iPad to somebody

the new user friendly model

I was talking to Ines Seifert from the German Institute of Animated Film as she gave us a ride back from the museum and asked her what life was like under the GDP. She said that she didn't really notice it much but they had a great sense of community because people depended on each other in different ways.

Bruce and Ines Siefert

I asked if it bothered her that she was not able to go to most of the world and said how where I came from (especially in the Reagan era) that communism was and still is the great satan and the picture that was painted of them was that they were living in a giant prison over here.

She said that the main thing was that they were into music and now they would be able to see the bands that they liked so much. I did realize later that she is my age, so it was different for us. We were teenagers when the wall came down, and at that point we were not traveling far from home much if at all. It apparently was really oppressive on the older generations. Imagine not being allowed to travel the globe….. bummer.

Under the GDP all women worked and had careers and schools payed for all extracurricular activities of the kids. Also things like animation studios were able to have 250 employees and not worry about where the funding for the next project was coming from. So next time you are rushing off to call our fearless ruler a pinko swine, think about the bill for your 5 year old's Esperanto lessons and intro to homoerotica classes.

I have only been to this side of the earth a few times but I must say that when Europe is beautiful, it is obscenely beautiful. I spent the day exploring Old Towne. Just simply amazing.

We had the first of Bruce shows on thursday night and it went well. We were interviewed pretty extensively for the festival podcast but, as you can see, I'm in a few of these shots but my interview ended up on the cutting room floor.

After the show I had to return the theater to drop off some materials and I had a true east german avante garde experience. Andre Eckhardt who is the main guy behind bringing us here, was just about to introduce the Experimental Cinema program and was so glad I was there so I could watch it with him. I politely went inside and took a seat. It was about 70 minutes of unintelligible, shaky camera, sound effect driven, low in the disguise of high concept short films. I was already tired, but I now needed  a coffin.