Tribute/Ehrung/Homenaje/дань

Love Your Brother

2006

Video Installaton

Dean Reed was an American and the biggest rock star in the history of the Soviet Union. He was so famous his icons were sold alongside those of Josef Stalin.

From Comrade Rock star, the search for Dean Reed, Reggie Nadelson

Otto Berchem's video, features a group of young Traditional Irish Musicians singing a song entitled Love Your Brother. This is no typical Irish song, but a reinterpretation of a piece originally written for a 1970s East German Western called Blutsbrüder and performed by the American singer and actor Dean Reed.

Both Berchem's remake, and the original include an introduction in German, explaining a little bit about the movie, and the song that's about to be sung. The monologue, and perhaps even the song itself, are almost a pastiche of Socialist propaganda.

The original film, like Reed and his music, are a relics of a bygone era, ignored in the West, and for the most part forgotten in the post-communist countries, but now brought back, fresh and revitalized, by a new generation, living in the city of Limerick, that had it's own, and mostly forgotten experience of socialism during the Limerick Soviet of 1919.

ottoberchem.com