The »underground« is an artistic approach which reacts to the historical crisis awareness of the modern era with a radical »poetry of verticality«. The »Wende« (change) stands metonymically for the moment at which the social sense of security is lost, and the city serves as its experienceable manifestation's preferred topos. Alfrun Kliems analyzes this constellation with the aid of multimedia from the East-Central European underground, with special attention to materials from between 1980 and 2010 – including work by Egon Bondy, Jacek Podsiadlo, Marcin Swietlicki, Andrzej Stasiuk, Jáchym Topol, and Peter Wawerzinek, but also from the Club der Polnischen Versager (Club of Polish Failures) in Berlin and the Orange Alternative out of Wrocław.
