Making its premiere in Singapore, this exhibition follows the footsteps of these women migrant workers. Their stories about life, love, work, and resistance are accompanied by an intersection of programmes that builds a bridge to the present day.

After the signing of the recruitment agreement between Germany and Turkey in 1961, a women’s hostel belonging to Telefunken, a technology company, located at Stresemannstrasse 30, became a first home in Berlin for many Turkish women – in a building that had, over a hundred years earlier, served as an educational institution for boys including German statesman Otto von Bismarck.

This literary salon will feature a reading of Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s autobiographical coming-of-age novel The Bridge of the Golden Horn by acclaimed Singaporean actress Tan Kheng Hua, with a post-show dialogue by Shermin Langhoff.

A screening of Unser Deutschlandmärchen(Our German Fairy Tale) by Sesede Terziyan will be presented in Singapore.  In Unser Deutschlandmärchen, mother Fatma and son and Dinçer go through their life together one more time, through their German fairy tale which is everything but a fairy tale. 

Led by Actress Sesede Terziyan, this workshop is for performers and activators looking to use theatre and performance as strategies for transformation, agency and emancipation. Sesede will draw from her past roles in Gorki productions such as Unser Deutschlandmärchen (Our German Fairy Tale)

In this Writer’s Talk, Dinçer reflects on the literary power to rewrite collective memory and reshape ideas on identity within a post-migrant society.

Writer, director and filmmaker Hakan Savaş Mican reflects on his oeuvre including his City Trilogy, by employing the lens of his mother to narrate intersectional stories of migration, labour, class, and memories. 

Shermin Langhoff, Artistic Director’s Talk on Maxim Gorki Theatre, its repertoire, and the 7th Berliner Herbstsalon entitled RE:IMAGINE – THE RED HOUSE (Inventories, Interventions, Inventions)