Ghost of a Protest is a video that visualises a post-apocalyptic site of protest. The main building in the video is the old Stasi building in Leipzig (Germany). By establishing a narrative based on the interdependencies of past, present and future it imagines the protest in the year 2053. This triad is concretized in three dates: 1989– the year of the peaceful revolution that led to the fall of the Iron Curtain–2021–the period of a drought
of public life–and 2053–which is the time between the two dates projected to the future.
 

Drawing inspiration from the genre of ‘Social science fiction’ and ‘Anthropological Science Fiction’ the project explores the inherent utopian qualities of protest in contemporary society and in a dystopian future. The former Stasi building becomes a site of inception. The physical space layers the traces of the historical past and the speculative future into the reality of the present.

​

Arijit Bhattacharyya in collaboration with Lea Maria Wittich and Swagata Bhattacharyya.

​

Commissioned by the state of Leipzig, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and Röda Sten Konsthall.

Link available upon request.