Sung Tieu: One Thousand Times (Gehrenseestrasse)
Sung Tieu, One Thousand Times (Gehrenseestrasse), 2023
Super 8 film transferred to HD video, colour, sound, 8 min 51 sec. Courtesy the artist and Emalin, London; Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg / Beirut; Trautwein Herleth, Berlin. © Sung Tieu
About the Work
1977 saw the planning of nine Plattenbau (‘panel building’) residential complexes to be built over the following years on Gehrenseestrasse in East Berlin’s north-eastern district of Alt-Hohenschönhausen. The complex at Gehrenseestrasse 1 was part of this state-wide programme, as well as a project with a specific agenda: throughout the 1980s, it was transformed into East Berlin’s largest housing complex for Vertragsarbeiter (contract workers) who came to Germany by way of labour agreements with socialist-leaning allies, the so-called Bruderländer (‘brother states’).
One Thousand Times (Gehrenseestrasse) (2023), captures the complex in its current state. Glimpsed details of the remnants of once-modular rooms and close-up shots of abundant plant life within the space give a sense that time has moved on. Meanwhile, the home-movie atmosphere of the Super 8 film on which the work is shot suggests that the experiences and worldviews of the 1980s and 1990s have not entirely vanished. In contrast to calls by investors and urban planners from the city of Berlin to reinvigorate and give new life to a long-defunct complex, Tieu’s portrayal of Gehrenseestrasse 1 offers a sense of lingering continuity and resonances across other ‘worlds’ beyond the legacies of the GDR in Germany.
Text: Eva Bentcheva, ‘Gehrenseestrasse 1: Between the Worlds of Architecture and Politics’, published in Sung Tieu: One Thousand Times, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Cologne: Snoeck, 2023.
About the Artist
Sung Tieu (b. 1987, Hai Duong, Vietnam) is a Berlin-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans installation, sculpture, drawing, text, photography, sound and video. Her work often juxtaposes research with autobiographical elements to explore the physical and psychological impacts of institutional structures.
About ICA x FRIEZE FILM LONDON
Frieze Film returns to Frieze London in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The curated selection of seven films will be screened throughout Frieze Week, 8–13 October, at the ICA and on frieze.com, streaming online until 31 October.
The programme showcases films from galleries with a focus on early-career and under-exposed artists. This year’s films were selected by a jury including Steven Cairns (Curator of Artists' Film and Moving Image at the ICA), Myriam Mouflih (Curator, Writer and Programmer at Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival) and Guilherme Blanc (Artistic Director of Batalha Centro de Cinema and curator of independent cinema and moving image) for the second year.
