Stasi

In Berlin I have become interested in surveillance.  

The DDR was infamous for their State Security (the Stasi) looming over every facet of it’s citizens lives. There presence in the country was pervasive and working in the midst of Gedenkstatt, the Stasi’s secret walled off city of office blocks, electronics facilities, surveillance technology, forging machinery, data and records centre, chemical experimentation lab, and secret prison is for me a daily reminder of the nature of that society. 

After going on a tour of Hohenschonhausen prison we watched “The Lives of Others.” It is a film about a Stasi agent who steps outside the strictures of his assignment in an ill-fated attempt to save a couple who he has become obsessed with because their live honestly which is at such odds with how disingenuous life in East Germany had become. Working in the midst of the Stasi facility coupled with the film my sensitivity to the nature of state voyeurism has been heightened

The State in an-ever increasing attempt to protect itself, ideas, and people the state grows a security apparatus. On a run on my first morning, I was fascinated, by a large old less-used complex of buildings.  Later I found, this area was also used by the State Security Services. It made me aware that “security” consumed an ever increasing  percentage of the talents, land, resources, funding and finally psychology of this East German nation.

Yet for all it’s sinister appearances one is also struck by how amateur the DDR was when compared to our secret society.  We have recently become aware that our governments are involved in secret renditions, black sites, enhanced interrogation[1], drone strikes, remote targeted assassinations, rules of engagement, the down loading of all our emails and texts, back doors into computer programs, paying internet companies for access, private security contractors, and massive data storage facilities in the desert. We have become the Stasi global in scope.

Today, it is fashionable to expose the depths of the intrusive nature of this small communist country. The Germans behind the wall called themselves the German Democratic Republic (DDR) and in order to preserve their republic they annulled Democracy. But from them we learn that no matter how consumed a culture can be with security you can never be totally and completely secure[2] even behind a wall.

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[1] The Stasi felt enlightened because they used no physical torture

[2] and possibly the very act of making a security state ensures ever increasing opposition to it.

Pictures from my phone ... Hohenschonhausen Prison
"Stairs"  oil on linen        20x60"  (from the hallways of Staso office tower ... now studio's)

"stasi"   etching               18x24"

"Stasi #1"    photo           11x14"

"Stasi" #2    photo           11x14"