Summer 1984
An audience of 50.000 people gathers at the Reichstag, Berlin, to marvel at the vast firework show entitled "The World and Counter World, or Tumbling through Dreams", presented by André Heller, the " total artist" from Vienna. Historical documentary film and photographs (of the proclamation of the Weimarer Republic in 1918, the Reichstag fire,the Russian conquest of the Reichstag after the Second World War etc.) transform the event into a spectacular illustration of German history, German dreams and their collaps, which appears to have become permanent with the division of the world into East and West. André Heller plans to set off 40.000 rockets, squibs and flares - 25 tons of explosives in all - at a place which is packed with historical associations, with the Wall and the Brandenburg Gate nearby. 136 loudspeakers supply a resonant background.