The singer Diana Ezerex has already completed 27 voluntary appearances in prisons. She came to Chemnitz with her band for the video shoot, followed by a performance at the Aaltra on October 20th.
She had her first appearance behind bars in 2017 – alone on stage, with guitar and her voice. A prison, according to Ezerex, is of course not a concert hall. Thick walls, meters high, security gates and armed personnel who control every step and the guitar case at the entrance. In the buildings, she performs in the gym, sometimes in the prison library, the dining room, a multipurpose room. Over time, Diana Ezerex visited 27 prisons in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. From thief and fraudster to rapist and murderer, Diana Ezerex has already listened to her concerts with all criminal degrees of severity, according to her estimation.
The type of crimes that individuals have committed are not the focus for her: “For me, the only thing that counts is the art and the effect on people.” Afterwards, she says, there was often an emotional mood, and tears were not uncommon: “Not even with the men.” Then you would start a conversation, exchange ideas about this and that. “Just a snack, not a therapy session,” says Ezerex and laughs. It’s those performances in the most unusual of surroundings that motivate them to keep going in the tough music business and fight their way through. “But above all, I’m concerned with art and culture, and that these elementary needs are made accessible to everyone. It doesn’t matter what he or she may have done in the past.” And so she tells of a recent encounter after a performance in Oldenburg. The last song was played, the instrument stopped, and afterwards a woman approached Ezerex, who said that she had recently been released from prison: “And she said that she wanted to look forward with confidence and courage.”
It was due to the sudden unavailability of the originally planned location that Diana Ezerex and her crew looked around for a new location in Saxony and Chemnitz. They finally found what they were looking for in motor traffic on Fraunhoferstrasse. A live concert for her pop album “My Pasts Gravity”, which will be released in 2021, was staged and recorded there. The film is part of the larger project Offsite Melange, which brings together plays, videos, a book and a school orchestra to rearrange the songs. At its core, the album, which Diana Ezerex conceived for two months in March 2020 in her empty shared flat at the beginning of the corona pandemic, which was characterized by uncertainty, deals with social and also individual challenges – acceptance, suicide, relationships characterized by violence, hope; The guidelines are the past, present and future. The basis for this was, among other things, interviews with the inmates, male and female, who reported on their time before and in prison, as well as with the officials and people who volunteer in prisons.
It was once a good friend who literally put her behind bars: “A friend who did an internship in a prison and told me a lot about everyday life there aroused my interest,” says Ezerex. In her view, criminals should not be excluded from society, even if they are sitting behind barred windows and walls with barbed wire. In the balancing act between protecting the population, punishing and reintegrating the offender, Ezerex’s music focuses particularly on the latter. In her work in a youth club, she experienced how conspicuous young people who should have received help were literally lost through bureaucracy and leaden administrative processes and as a result found themselves in front of the judges’ bench. “A lot more should be done for prevention. Even if that’s easy to say, it also helps protect the population in the long term. By the time someone is in prison, it’s often too late,” says Ezerex. She considers psychological therapy and the processing of trauma to be urgently needed. In addition, society should not stigmatize and further criminalize former prison inmates, but rather offer them an opportunity: “I would like to see more trust here.”
It was not possible to organize a performance in the women’s prison of the JVA Chemnitz at short notice. “I would have loved to have performed there, but unfortunately it wasn’t possible in terms of time.” Ezerex was not aware that an inmate known throughout Germany, a former member of the National Socialist underground and convicted of ten murders, was serving her life sentence in Chemnitz. She says that in order to be able to play with an open mind, she didn’t fundamentally anticipate who is in the prisons. When asked whether she would sing in front of Beate Zschäpe, she initially reacted with surprise and thoughtfulness, but then said all the more clearly: “Even if it’s a difficult question – yes, I would. Despite everything, I believe in the good things in life People, and maybe I can make a positive contribution. Even with someone like Beate Zschäpe.”
Diana Ezerex performs as part of her “Gravity Tour” on October 20th at Aaltra Chemnitz. Tickets: 8 euros.
aaltra-chemnitz.de