The Dig

In cooperation with the Academy of the Arts of the World

As part of the ongoing artistic research project THE ART OF WAR, Jan Peter Hammer’s THE DIG looks at the looting and illegal trading of cultural artifacts in northwest Bulgaria. The region has been in a state of permanent economic malaise since the collapse of socialism. The Soviet-era steel plants have gone to ruin, the factories are vacant and recent excavations pepper the ancient burial mounds, dug in search of artifacts. Here it becomes clear: the future is either communist or there is no future at all – just a protracted or magnified present, which drags on, plagued by power differentials, exploitation, and militarism. The screening is followed by a discussion between the filmmaker Jan Peter Hammer and art historian Susanne Leeb.