“GB 84”

JOACHIM KRÓL and MICHAEL KERSTGENS

As part of the programme accompanying the exhibition “Michael Kerstgens. Out of Control” (on view until May 11, 2025), the actor Joachim Król and the photographer Michael Kerstgens will take the stage at FFF to bring us closer to the human conditions during the 1980s British mining strikes.

Joachim Król, whose father was a miner, will read from “GB 84” by David Peace, a novel dealing with the toughest and longest strikes of the English labour movement in 1984/85. As a young student, Michael Kerstgens travelled to Wales and Yorkshire to photograph the strikes when the events in Great Britain were at their peak.

On this evening, Joachim Król takes on the role of the narrator and reads from the novel ‘GB 84’, while Michael Kerstgens shows his photographs of the strike events at the time, focussing on the social dimension and the lives of the families affected.

The dialogue between words and images gives the audience a sense of the extent of the industrial action in Great Britain, which lasted for about one year. In addition to the unusual duration, the energetic resistance of the trade unions, especially the miners' union NUM under Arthur Scargill, against the neo-liberal privatisation policy of the Conservative government under Margret Thatcher is also remembered.