Artist Anna Zett Explores GDR Waste Politics and Environmental Legacy Through Archival Research and Installations

Artist Anna Zett presents research and artistic work examining waste management in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), connecting environmental, political, and emotional dimensions. The project began in 2018 with archival investigation at the GDR Opposition Archive in Berlin, focusing on the environmental movement of the 1980s. Zett discovered details about waste trade agreements between East and West Germany, where West Berlin exported household and hazardous waste to GDR landfills in exchange for foreign currency through a secretive state agency called KoKo. Key sites included the VEB Deponie Potsdam and VEB Schönberg (now Ihlenberg Landfill). Zett's artistic practice includes installations like 'Deponie 2' (2018) at Zionskirche Berlin, featuring modified GDR-era concrete garbage bins, and video works such as 'Afraid doesn’t exist' (2023) that blend archival footage with imagery of waste dumps. The work critiques how the GDR's socialist state concealed environmental data and became an ecological wasteland despite sustainable consumer practices. Zett also reflects on the symbolic role of borders, linking waste disposal to the division of Germany and the legacy of Nazism. The project is part of a special issue on the Socialist Anthropocene in visual arts, with Zett's contributions spanning video, performance, and installation formats that explore themes of memory, repression, and post-industrial landscapes.