In Scandinavian cinema there has been a long tradition of paying attention to little things and to the everyday world; personal concerns, wishes and longings are clarified against this background. In her artistic work, Lisa Strömbeck often adopts such practice, playing with well-known everyday phenomena in her video and performance works.

With a sly wink and a certain sense of comedy and irony, therefore, she reflects on our exaggerated affection for animals or the manifestations of female role clichés.

In the 28-minute video she made in Berlin, “Es war ja nicht alles schlecht” (Not all of it was bad), Strömbeck examined a specific historical problem affecting the place she is currently living; Germany. She documents the personal stories of eight former GDR citizens, with whom she spoke at length about their life in the GDR and the period after the Wende. Entirely different evaluations of the political and private changes experienced by the protagonists emerged; changes triggered by the dramatic process of transforming a socialist social structure into capitalism and all its inherent implications.

Disillusionment and hope thus occupy equal places in this work, which contains no spoken commentary by the artist, but leaves any statements to the people interviewed.