Nowadays, creativity is on everyone's lips: It is regarded as an expression of free thinking, as an artistic, social, and even economic potential. What status, however, did creativity have in a dictatorship such as the former GDR? Based on the work of dancers, musicians and artists of different genres, this book examines the discourse on creativity in the GDR and its connection to the establishment of a performative canon of art that had become relevant since the 1960ies. Fine Kwiatkowski, A.R. Penck, Lutz Dammbeck, Gret Palucca and others: Although their improvisations and performative art interventions did partly take place within an official, institutionalized framework, they were also perceived as criticism against or a rejection of the prevailing system. Whether or not their art was understood as political communication depended on the context. Therefore, this publication casts a transnational view on fields seemingly alien to art, such as social sciences and cybernetics. This is the realm in which the language that was used as a means of legitimizing new artistic practices established itself. The surprising result: The model of the creative subject, regarded as hegemonial in capitalism today, did have its socialist equivalent in the GDR.

Dr. Barbara Lubich arbeitet als Filmemacherin und Publizistin in Dresden.