State of Control: Art Installation at the Stasi Headquarters

Normannenstrasse 19 in Berlin-Lichtenberg. The address is enough to send a chill down the spine: till 1989 it belonged to the headquarters of the MfS, the Ministry for State Security, or Stasi. 

Here, in a complex of grim-looking Plattenbau concrete buildings, a well-oiled administrative machine employed a staff of eighty thousand to keep the population of the DDR under constant surveillance. In January 1990, when the German government authorized the destruction of Stasi files, civil rights groups stormed the complex.  Graffiti on the walls ("Never again the SED Mafia" says one) still bears witness to the event. Since then, the building has been closed to the public, its starkly neon-lit hallways and meeting rooms echoing with silence.

For the first time since 1989, the building is once again open to the public. Stripped of all furniture but still haunted by its past, these large silent rooms were the perfect space for Thomas Kilpper's art installation "State of Control." 

"I was immediately inspired by the space," says Kilpper, an artist and sculptor from Stuttgart. "I found exactly what I was looking for." Kilpper converted the 800-square-meter floor of what was once the ministry's dining hall into a giant printing block. Etched into the linoleum floor are 92 images of divided Germany, for which Kilpper used a kind of woodcutting technique. First, he projected photographs onto the yellow/green linoleum, then cut into the outlines of the negative images. Finally, he ran  a black-ink roller over the surface, leaving the non-print surface in the original linoleum color.

The effect is striking. The images have been cut into the floor just as they have been sharply etched in the nation's memory. The three underlying themes are clear:  state security, resistance and terrorism. Only the lines of differentiation between them are deliberately left blurred. 

Silvio Berlusconi and John Heartfield. Photo: Jens Ziehe. Courtesy Neuer Berliner Kunstverein

I was lucky enough to visit with a historian friend who helped fill several gaps in my knowledge. For the most part, viewers are left to "read" images on their own. The floor map that accompanies the exhibition is difficult to follow, and the images don't have a chronological or thematic sequence.  Kilpper does not guide you with any kind of commentary. It is as if the artist says: See in your mind's eye that press photo from the 70s. Remember that image from a documentary film made twenty years ago. Or the popular movie released two years ago. Or the news headlines from four weeks ago. Remember and connect.

Willi Brandt and Günter Guillaume. Photo: Jens Ziehe. Courtesy Neuer Berliner Kunstverein

A Surreal Portrait Gallery

Before we knew it, we were treading over the first of Kilpper's linoleum-cuts: Erich Mielke, Minister of State Security and head of the Stasi till 1989, clinking champagne glasses with Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker. Toward the middle of the room is the high-ranking Stasi spy Günter Guillaume whispering into the ear of Chancellor Willy Brandt as though giving him the Judas kiss. Then there is French philosopher Michel Foucault giving a lecture at the Technische Universität Berlin in 1976; directly below him, an idyllic picnic scene in the DDR. Across from the picnickers are the protesters against the Pershing missiles; next to them, Erich Mielke again, this time dancing with his wife in the ballroom in the very building in which we stand. 

Kilpper lets the images, drawn from national and press archives as well as from his own private collection,  cluster in an intuitive rather than ordered way: "The whole constellation emerged like a labyrinthine blackberry bush," he said.

Just about four weeks ago, the case of Benno Ohnesorg, the student shot down in the 1968 demonstrations, was making national headlines when it was discovered that Karl-Heinz Kurras, the West Berlin police officer who shot him, was a Stasi agent. Clearly, Kilpper's themes reach from history into the present. In the end, though, this is more than a collection of images having to do with just the Stasi. "Instead," says Kilpper, " I wanted to show the fine line everywhere between resistance and terrorism."

While at Normannenstraße 19, don't overlook the opportunity of visiting the Stasi Museum, also in the same complex. The exhibition features a lot of explanatory text (all in German), but the still-palpable atmosphere of the powerful machinery of repression needs no translation. Mielke's office, the canteen and the conference room have all been preserved in their original state, and there are rooms full of operative technology for spying -- including a hidden camera in a birdhouse.

"State of Control" runs till 26 July 2009 at the former Ministerium für Staatssicherheit der DDR (MfS) at Normannenstraße 19, Berlin-Lichtenberg. Admission is free and staff on duty are happy to answer questions. Public Transportation: U5 to Magdalenenstr. 

The Stasi Museum is at Ruschestraße 103, Haus 1, 10365 Berlin. Admission is 4 EUR, reduced fee 3,50 EUR. Open Monday to Friday from 11:00 am to 6 pm, on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from 2 pm to 6 pm.