Jane and Louise
Wilson

British twins Jane and Louise Wilson (b. 1967 in Newcastle upon Tyne) have been working together as an artist duo since 1989. In 1995, the sisters—also in spirit—received the Prize of the Kunstverein Hannover, a year-long scholarship awarded by the Kunstverein and the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (BKP). This enabled them to spend six months working at Villa Minimo in Hanover in 1996, followed by six months in Berlin.

During their residency in Berlin, Jane and Louise Wilson made Stasi City (1997), a video work about the physical and psychological significance of spaces that effectively evoked the inhuman machinery of the GDR power structure. At the center of the video installation that was created around this work were two double projections. The presentation also included large-format color photographs showing interior views of the filming locations and reconstructed film sets. The footage was shot in three spaces in what was formerly the East German Ministry for State Security (MfS)’s power center in East Berlin—commonly known as “Stasi-Stadt” (Stasi City)—that have remained almost unchanged: the headquarters of the Ministry for State Security; the paternoster elevator of an office building on Jägerstrasse; and the former Stasi prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen.

Stasi City reveals how closely political ideology was linked to architecture in the former GDR, above all in East Berlin. Jane and Louise Wilson were interested in the psychological component of architecture. What does it say about the people who lived and worked there? How were people influenced by their surroundings, and what have they left behind? The Wilsons explored how power structures can be imposed by the architecture of public authorities, and how this can induce fear at a subliminal level.

Jane and Louise Wilson focused above all on the Stasi prison’s office spaces and the hospital wing. Soundproof double doors, hidden back rooms, safes, and surveillance monitors tell their own story. The artists’ personal but nevertheless detached perspective testifies to the oppressively pedantic and cruelly bureaucratic atmosphere that must have prevailed here during the Stasi era. The videos show interiors which, as impersonal public spaces, convey a mood of oppression. In the context of the collaboration between the Kunstverein Hannover and the BKP, Stasi City was first exhibited in Hanover, then in Berlin and other cities. It was the Wilsons’ first solo show in Germany and their most extensive project to date.

Jane and Louise Wilson’s art often centers on the female body, trapped in abusive situations or horrifying scenarios with no chance of escape. Their work Normapaths (1995) was filmed in a disused brewery warehouse and plays on the conventions of 1930s gangster and horror movies. It also deals with the ascription of particular roles to women, seeing them as having the paradoxical qualities of being violent and at the same time incapable of aggression. Normapaths thus also explores the tension between woman as victim and as strong subject.

The Wilsons’ arresting video and photo installations are internationally acclaimed and have been showcased at venues such as the Venice Biennale; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Serpentine Gallery, London; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Text: Laura Windisch
Translation: Jacqueline Todd