Sail installation,
white and red sail, 2018

November, installation view, Galerie im Sallbau, 2018, Berlin

November

As part of a series of works about the tradition of worker writers, Ina Wudtke produced the installation November, composed of two sails. Ina Wudtke’s starting point for her research was the work of Bertold Brecht and his colleague Margarete Steffin (1908-1941). The two met in the theatre course of the Marxist Workers’ School in Neukölln. Later on, while in exile in Denmark, they would constitute a writers collective which produced the most important texts of anti-fascist resistance (published under Brecht’s name only). While the red sail refers to Brecht’s famous 1926 song “Pirate Jenny”, the white sail bears the text of Margarete Steffin’s little known song from 1934, “Lied des Schiffsjungen” (Song of the Deck Boy). In the literature of the working class authors’ of the time, the November Revolution, instigated by the Kiel naval mutiny, is frequently represented symbolically as a ship. The “Song of the Cabin Boy” was the only text by Steffin to be published during her lifetime.

November, Detail, Galerie im Sallbau, 2018, Berlin (Fotos: Nihad Nino Pusija)