aus Bergheimer Straße 117, 414
HD Video, 29.10 min, color, sound, 2025
video stills “aus Bergheimer Straße 117, 414”
His niece is riding a bike over the grandfather’s former workplace. As he watches this scene with us, he is not impressed: “aha…”, bike slowly rolling away, as the oral narration, told by himself and supported by other contemporary witnesses, returns. What we are witnessing is a part of workers history from socialist Romania, tied to a large construction project in West Germany, in the mid-seventies. Their experience is that of contracted workers, though their legal status, as employed by the state-owned company ARCOM (Romanian Construction and Assembly Company) is that of delegated employes *a gap in research on this matter, means that their legal status as temporary workers for specific west German companies, while in the employment of the socialist state is still to be determined*
We listen to the story of the workers, from their interpellation in the new environment to the alienation that their status as tools has inflicted upon them. Different working models rub up against each other. The calculated efficiency irritates the workers, eventually resulting in a rejection of that model and a return to a relations-based work landscape. Liberation looms unfulfilled in the background.
The temporal time frame of the project is the introduction of the contracted worker model (Leiharbeitergesetz) in West Germany. While recruitment agencies as middleman for the provision of labor have become standard in EU’s economic model, with disastrous consequences for workers, in the story I engage with, the intermediary company was part of the state itself. I am tackling this subject from the perspective of the minor, by working with the work history of my grandfather and the artefacts he collected during his time in Germany.
His voice leads the narration, the rhythm of which is accelerated to such an extent that the aim is for the stories to hunt you afterwards, with no time to grasp during the screening. There is no enjoyment; it is work to see the work; it is work to listen. On the one hand, one could also say that the video cannot be seen, because the image blurs away, blinking, it disappears, sometimes only one tone away from white screen, from gray, from nothing. The perspective is incorrect, the poor image emphasizes the impossibility of a retrospective gaze, while the sound pressures us into the “short present”.
His niece is riding a bike over the grandfather’s former workplace. As he watches this scene with us, he is not impressed: “aha…”, bike slowly rolling away, as the oral narration, told by himself and supported by other contemporary witnesses, returns. What we are witnessing is a part of workers history from socialist Romania, tied to a large construction project in West Germany, in the mid-seventies. Their experience is that of contracted workers, though their legal status, as employed by the state-owned company ARCOM (Romanian Construction and Assembly Company) is that of delegated employes *a gap in research on this matter, means that their legal status as temporary workers for specific west German companies, while in the employment of the socialist state is still to be determined*
We listen to the story of the workers, from their interpellation in the new environment to the alienation that their status as tools has inflicted upon them. Different working models rub up against each other. The calculated efficiency irritates the workers, eventually resulting in a rejection of that model and a return to a relations-based work landscape. Liberation looms unfulfilled in the background.
The temporal time frame of the project is the introduction of the contracted worker model (Leiharbeitergesetz) in West Germany. While recruitment agencies as middleman for the provision of labor have become standard in EU’s economic model, with disastrous consequences for workers, in the story I engage with, the intermediary company was part of the state itself. I am tackling this subject from the perspective of the minor, by working with the work history of my grandfather and the artefacts he collected during his time in Germany.
His voice leads the narration, the rhythm of which is accelerated to such an extent that the aim is for the stories to hunt you afterwards, with no time to grasp during the screening. There is no enjoyment; it is work to see the work; it is work to listen. On the one hand, one could also say that the video cannot be seen, because the image blurs away, blinking, it disappears, sometimes only one tone away from white screen, from gray, from nothing. The perspective is incorrect, the poor image emphasizes the impossibility of a retrospective gaze, while the sound pressures us into the “short present”.