Beyond Orwell, 2018
When The Power Has Gone ( 2018/2024)
https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/11967066
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth".
George Orwell, 1984
I was raised in a block of flats overlooking the strip of no-man's-land behind the Berlin Wall. Access to the other side was nonexistent. Each night, floodlights illuminating the forbidden ground invaded the privacy of my bedroom.
Below, guard dogs barked as they patrolled within clearly delineated boundaries, tethered to wires extending from a horizontal pole. From my window we threw food to them. For a while they would be quiet, the only sound being the passing city trains as they travelled past our flats before disappearing into the tunnel leading to the West.
I was seven years old when I heard a woman scream as she was shot in no-man's-land while attempting to flee to the West. The incident was never mentioned by my family or reported in the newspapers, yet I never forgot it.
139 people died at the Berlin Wall between 13 August 1961 and 9 November 1989.
In the early 1980s, my elderly grandmother smuggled George Orwell's forbidden book 1984 through Checkpoint Charlie from the West, hidden in her underwear. The reality around us made Orwell's fictional world feel disturbingly familiar.
Only years later did I begin to understand the extent to which this world was being recorded and monitored. Before 1989, around 97,000 people were employed by the Ministry for State Security, supported by approximately 189,000 unofficial collaborators. Information about people's lives was collected through an extensive network of surveillance and reporting.
In 1997, I received my own Stasi file, 1214/87. It contained copies of my correspondence, information about my work and contacts, and records of the surveillance of my mail.
For Beyond Orwell, I used material from my file together with data relating to the surveillance of East German citizens. I translated this information into three-dimensional abstract forms and photographed the resulting objects.
The original information remains within the work, but its form and accessibility have changed. What was once collected in order to monitor people becomes an object that can be looked at differently.
16 images (70 × 50 cm).
Shortlisted for Aesthetica Art Prize 2019
Aesthetica Art Prize 2019 | Artist Profile | Christiane Zschommler on Vimeo
https://vimeo.com/317048432
https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/11967066
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth".
George Orwell, 1984
I was raised in a block of flats overlooking the strip of no-man's-land behind the Berlin Wall. Access to the other side was nonexistent. Each night, floodlights illuminating the forbidden ground invaded the privacy of my bedroom.
Below, guard dogs barked as they patrolled within clearly delineated boundaries, tethered to wires extending from a horizontal pole. From my window we threw food to them. For a while they would be quiet, the only sound being the passing city trains as they travelled past our flats before disappearing into the tunnel leading to the West.
I was seven years old when I heard a woman scream as she was shot in no-man's-land while attempting to flee to the West. The incident was never mentioned by my family or reported in the newspapers, yet I never forgot it.
139 people died at the Berlin Wall between 13 August 1961 and 9 November 1989.
In the early 1980s, my elderly grandmother smuggled George Orwell's forbidden book 1984 through Checkpoint Charlie from the West, hidden in her underwear. The reality around us made Orwell's fictional world feel disturbingly familiar.
Only years later did I begin to understand the extent to which this world was being recorded and monitored. Before 1989, around 97,000 people were employed by the Ministry for State Security, supported by approximately 189,000 unofficial collaborators. Information about people's lives was collected through an extensive network of surveillance and reporting.
In 1997, I received my own Stasi file, 1214/87. It contained copies of my correspondence, information about my work and contacts, and records of the surveillance of my mail.
For Beyond Orwell, I used material from my file together with data relating to the surveillance of East German citizens. I translated this information into three-dimensional abstract forms and photographed the resulting objects.
The original information remains within the work, but its form and accessibility have changed. What was once collected in order to monitor people becomes an object that can be looked at differently.
16 images (70 × 50 cm).
Shortlisted for Aesthetica Art Prize 2019
Aesthetica Art Prize 2019 | Artist Profile | Christiane Zschommler on Vimeo
https://vimeo.com/317048432
