Nadja Buttendorf: rosie - teh next generation

Videostill from Nadja Buttendorf, rosie - teh next generation, 2026, 25:34 min., QHD video, colour, sound. Courtesy of the artist

- selected by Inke Arns (HMKV)–


To the Video: https://rosie-tv.nadjabuttendorf24.com

rosie – the next generation explores the upheavals and transformations at the VEB Kombinat Robotron in 1989/90. The street protests of October 1989 also reached GDR enterprises, bringing with them demands for change. There were calls for greater freedom of action, and an active, creative and self-empowering movement emerged that made it possible to change existing conditions in the workplace as well.
rosie – teh next generation follows on from the YouTube series Robotron – a tech opera, in which Nadja Buttendorf has been telling the story since 2018 of the state-owned enterprise Kombinat Robotron, the largest manufacturer of computer technology in the GDR and one of the most significant producers of information technology in socialist Eastern Europe.
In the Robotron staff newspaper, which served as a party organ until December 1989 and subsequently passed into the hands of the employees, there was already speculation about a new company name if a merger with Siemens were to take place: RO-SIE GmbH.
It was assumed that the merger would be on an equal footing. Instead of rosy times, the reality of an economic takeover followed: Siemens merely bought up parts of Robotron. In 1990, the majority of Robotron was liquidated and wound up by the Treuhand. The promised modernisation and job security failed to materialise.
rosie – teh next generation was brought to life on Roblox, a video game platform for children and teenagers. The story is set in the 3D-reconstructed Robotron canteen, where the employees’ daily working lives and hopes for the future are explored. (text: Nadja Buttendorf)

 

Nadja Buttendorf questions contemporary codes and norms of gender construction and challenges the mechanisms of value creation that affect the human body in our digital society. Her work illustrates that even our understanding of technology is closely tied to systems of patriarchal power relations. Rejecting these notions, her interactive works and video projects are designed for interaction constructing new and far more multilayered narratives in which women regain their visibility as an integral part of the history of technology. To this end, she draws on communicative moments of online participation both in her online tutorials and by creating performative jewelry objects. DIY as a widespread online aesthetic functions as a consciously employed strategy of both enabling access and defying neoliberal work ethics.

Works and workshops by Nadja Buttendorf have been presented at numerous institutions in Germany and abroad, including HKW Berlin, Kunsthalle Bremen, Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, Seoul Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig. She is currently participating in the exhibition Robotron. Working Class and Intelligentsia (on view until 26 July 2026) at the HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein. She has also presented lecture performances at events such as re:publica, the Chaos Communication Congress (CCC), and at nGbK Berlin.

Nadja Buttendorf is a trained goldsmith and studied Fine Arts at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle (Saale).