The Dynamic Memory Lab Nước Đức focuses on Vietnamese-German migration history and asks how history is remembered and told – or suppressed and silenced. The exhibition centres on the memories and experiences of the Viet-German community, shaped over decades by flight and contract labour, between North and South Vietnam and East and West Germany, and by histories of violence and acts of self-empowerment.
Curated by Dan Thy Nguyen and Nina Reiprich, the Dynamic Memory Lab Nước Đức creates a space for experiences that are rarely considered in relation to one another, despite being deeply intertwined. Together, these stories form a memory-political field of tension that spans all political and social directions of the Cold War and the post-reunification period – like a compass that reveals both ideological ruptures and biographical entanglements.
The curators bring together contributions by artists and activists from the second generation of Viet-German immigrants who engage with Vietnamese-German migration history from multiple perspectives. They invite and urge us to understand this history as part of our shared story, to question the boundaries of dominent memory discourses, and to strengthen memory as a social funtion.
Through artistic explorations, personal texts, and interview sequences, the exhibition explores the complex experiences of the Viet-German communities, exposing contradictions, ruptures, and gaps. These experiences are presented as a reciprocal space of reference: as memories of a plural community – and as memories of a plural society. They do not form a linear narrative but rather an interplay of different perspectives.
The exhibition raises central questions: Whose voices are heard? Which memories are given space? What remains in the shadows? And how can a shared, multi-perspective history be told? The Dynamic Memory Lab Nước Đức opens up a space for new, layered forms of collective remembrance.
The Dynamic Memory Lab Nước Đức will open on September 20, 2025 as part of the heimaten Festival in Rostock, accompanied by workshops, panel discussions, and artistic interventions.
With contributions by Phuong Dan, KI Bui, Minh Duc Pham, Dan Thy Nguyen, and artists from the CPPD network.
4:00 pm
Volkstheater Rostock
