GARAGES

In his program as the European Capital of Culture 2025, Chemnitz has assigned a central role to garages. The bid book characterizes them as not big enough for the recent trend of ever bigger cars anymore. But garages and their original purpose have given way to workshops, storages, and retreats to (all sorts of) the private.

As a modern and multifunctional space of refuge and creativity they provide places of interaction and every day life – especially in East Germany. That is why the team of the Institute of Saxon History and Cultural Anthropology takes interest in these wide-ranging functions and meanings of the garage. For 2025 we will develop easy to access contributions to the phenomenon and find answers to questions such as: Which uses and representations of the garage are of relevance in popular culture, what role do they play in biographic narrations? What are important aspects of the social and legal history of the garage – when and how do they become scenes of criminal activity? How are garages present and imagined in literature or photography? And what is in a garage or made in a garage – be it art, handiwork, music…?

A garage, of course, will be at our disposal. It is in a central location and easy to get to by public transport and bike.