Between 1959 to 1990, the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) Radio Berlin International broadcast music, news, and political propaganda in up to seventeen languages from Berlin to the world, including in Swahili, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, French, and English. Radio Berlin International was a significant information channel  during the Cold War, offering a state view of socialist life in the GDR and broadcast many programmes namely to South America, Africa, the Middle East, and South East Asia, featuring participants and events related to the ‘brother countries’.

Departing from the closing programmes that were broadcast by Radio Berlin International in 1990 and which shared this focus, Alfredo Thiermann offers a performative listening session and a space of remembrance. By tuning in to the last moments of the radio that connected communities across regions from the GDR station, Thiermann’s work 1990 invites us to perceive and engage with the echoes of those geopolitical alliances and listeners’ friendships along with the emotions, difficulties, and expectations of the 1990 transition from one system to another.