JANE & LOUISE WILSON
Stasi City, 1997

4 channel video installation with sound
Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York

DESCRIPTION

Jane and Louise Wilson’s Stasi City is a psychological exploration of the mute, abandoned architectural spaces of the Stasi, the former headquarters of the East German secret police. For five minutes, a video camera slowly and deliberately pans through the building’s hallways and interrogation rooms, invoking the long history of abuses that took place there, as a human figure floats gently upwards unpinned from the laws of gravity. The four channel video installation is shown on opposite corners of the enclosed installation space, reinforcing a sense of confinement and surveillance.

BIOGRAPHY

Using film, photography, and sculpture, Jane and Louise Wilson have created a series of highly theatrical and atmospheric installations that investigate the darker side of human experience. They first began working together in 1989, and have since been fascinated by the power of the unconscious mind, creating a body of work which probes collective anxieties and phobias, arouses unwanted memories, and reveals things which are usually repressed.

Images courtesy the artists