ROBOTRON

Concept Text:

Robotron – a tech opera, dealing with computer development in a command (planned) economy and the everyday life of women in East Germany.

Robotron – is the first soap opera playing in the computer industry of the GDR. VEB Kombinat Robotron was the computer manufacterer in the GDR, an amalgamation of several electronic and data processing nationally-owned enterprises. My mother was working as a skilled worker at robotron from 1976 – 1990, where she met my father, who was working as a electro engineer. They married, got two kids. Later my father started an affair with another woman working at Robotron as well. Everyone knew about it, except my mother.

It’s not only about processing the story of my family but using this scenario at Robotron as base material to generate a fictional story going way beyond the fact. I‘ll take this emotional states of confusion of the characters to propose an herstory of technology. The future is certain. It’s the past which is unpredictable. (according to a soviet joke).

In the summer, when everyone will be on holiday I‘ll turn my flat in a green screen paradise to shoot this soap opera. I’ll play all roles by myself and include the found footage from my research in the post production. The video works of Nasime Aghdam known as the youtube shooter will serve as an inspiration for the prodcution. Robotron will oscillates in its aesthetics between Star Trek, Good Times – Bad Times and Snapchat clip style. The web series will be published online.
In 1990 during the German reunification, the trustee relationship (Treuhand) liquidated the company Robotron and my parents get divorced.

Bio:

Nadja Buttendorf is a transdisciplinary artist specialized in questions of cybernetic enhancements of the human body, alien speculative scenarios and post-human jewellery. She is a founding member of the Cyborgs e.V. Berlin and is known to have coined the term ›Explants‹.