Reconstructing “Yo I–Friendship,” 2025
Video, Lecture Performance, work in progress
Reconstructing “Yo I–Friendship,” is a lecture performance and in-progress film based on the unrealized film treatment “Yo I–Friendship” written by German socialist author Alex Wedding (Grete Weiskopf). Developed between 1956–57, the treatment envisioned a cross-cultural exchange between the People’s Republic of China and East Germany, tracing commodities as symbols of connection between socialist nations. Filmed as a travelogue and experimental documentary, this retelling will follow the treatment’s narrative arc while weaving research and reenactments. This work revisits a forgotten moment of cultural exchange between the GDR and PCR, when state oversight in the film sector loosened, allowing for unprecedented possibilities for imaginative, non-dogmatic approaches to cinema. Staging an encounter between the past and present, this work asks how the ideologies and transnational alliances during this period influence our contemporary beliefs.
The lecture performance draws on the artist’s ongoing research into autoethnography, cultural memory, and the travelogue as both a cinematic form and political instrument.
This project was presented at ZK/U’s July OPENHAUS.
Photos by Lili Xie and Elisa Georgi.