Image: Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge
On Tuesday, October 13, 2026, the event ‘Pınar Öğrenci: Good Luck in Germany’ will be held in person at Harvard Art Museums’ Menschel Hall, Lower Level, from 6:00 to 7:15 p.m.
Berlin-based artist and filmmaker Pınar Öğrenci will discuss her 2024 film ‘Glück auf in Deutschland (Good Luck in Germany).’ The film examines the construction of postwar German identity in the Ruhrgebiet, a heavily industrialized region known for coal mining and steel production, through layered experiences of survival, resistance, and resilience.
The film is featured in Öğrenci’s first major exhibition in the United States, presented at Harvard Art Museums. On view from April 16 through October 18, 2026, the exhibition includes five related collages that reimagine the bodies of workers and their families within the Ruhr landscape and its architecture.
In the film, Öğrenci applies a feminist lens to broaden the history of industrial labor beyond the male worker and the factory.
The lecture will place ‘Glück auf in Deutschland’ in conversation with Öğrenci’s other films, exploring filmmaking as a political practice through which the history of guest workers can be connected to ongoing struggles around labor, migration, and belonging. The lecture will be recorded and made available for online viewing after the event.
The phrase ‘Glück auf’ is a common way that miners wish one another a safe return after physically grueling and dangerous underground work, and its use resonates with immigrant communities in present-day Germany facing right-wing extremism.
