Colourful and bizarre, with a sense of impending doom but also enthusiasm for the future: the 80s.
Not everything from the 80s was bad. But a lot of it was. It’s the decade of exploding perms and porno moustaches, of pumped-up shoulder pads and flashy show-offs; in the 80s, yuppies become the pioneers of a new culture of egotism. But at the same time, there is an ever-present fear of the apocalypse, of nuclear death and world destruction, and people long for community and warmth. Helmut Kohl proclaims the ‘moral turnaround’, but hundreds of thousands demonstrate for peace and disarmament and the Green Party establishes itself as a political force. Pop culture becomes the setting for feminist and gay emancipation, hip hop gives a voice to minorities, which have been almost invisible. An entire generation learns how to program on the Commodore 64 and sets out on the pathway to a digital society. At the end of the decade, the Berlin Wall falls, an upheaval that continues to shape our world to this day. Jens Balzer shines a light on the contradictions of the eighties, the strange fashions and bizarre lifestyles, as well as the compulsion for revolution that contained the roots of our present.
