Disseny quotidià de la R.D.A.

Matthias Dietz / C.Habernoll

13/06/91. (Sala 129)

S.E.D.
SABER EVITAR EL DISSENY (Knowing how to avoid design)
STUNNING EASTERN DESIGN

From 13 June – 6 July

On 9 November 1989, day of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the GDR was dissolved.

From 3 October, 1990, Unification day, the territory of the former ex GDR is also part of the FRG.

The gross national product of the GDR ranked ninth worldwide. It was a highly industrialized country with a large production of goods. Plastic products were sold within the Eastern block, machinery and optical instruments worldwide.

But how did outsiders see these insignificant daily objects, which were found on store shelves to be sold? This whole world of products was new to the Western world, even to the former FRG.

The summer of 1989, before the fall of the Wall, designer Matthias Dietz filled a car with these products, purchased for a value of 1.200.000 pesetas in the stores from the East. He organized the “S.E.D.” exhibition with this collection.

“Saber Evitar el Diseño” (SED is the abbreviation of the former Communist Party of the GDR).

So nobody knew that by unification all these objects would disappear suddenly and a year later it would be hard to buy as they would never be produced again. All products that existed until 1989 make up this 1991 Museum. What must pass through people’s minds that can finally buy goods from the West, but will no longer find the usual products again?

There is a catalogue about the exhibition, which has not been released outside of Germany until now and which is written by Georg C. Bertsch with photographs by Erns Hedler in which the history of design in Socialism is explained in detail and the difference between capitalist and socialist design is distinguished. (It can be purchased in La Sala Vinçon)

Barcelona, June 1991