Artist Gabriele Stötzer presents her monograph Gabriele Stötzer. Die Geister berühren in conversation with Anne König and Jan Wenzel (Spector Books).
Gabriele Stötzer’s wide-ranging body of work has garnered an enormous response in recent years, after having gone largely unnoticed for over 30 years. It began in the underground scene of the GDR. After Biermann’s expatriation in 1976, Gabriele Stötzer served a one-year prison sentence and then made a conscious decision to remain in the GDR. She took photographs, shot Super 8 films, wove, painted, published literary texts in underground magazines and artist books, and organised fashion-object shows and performances with the Künstlerinnengruppe (artists group) Erfurt. On December 4, 1989, together with like-minded individuals, she occupied the State Security district headquarters in Erfurt—the first occupation of a Stasi headquarters, an act of civil disobedience unprecedented in German history. Her monograph is being published to coincide with the solo exhibition Dabeisein und nicht schweigen at the Gropius Bau in Berlin.