Jane & Louise Wilson b. 1967
Stasi City (1997)
Duration: 5 min.

Stasi City consists of two pairs of projections on walls meeting at two 90-degree angles diagonally opposite from each other. The installation could be said to be a sculptural object in the sense that it creates an open cube construction in the gallery, the filmic walls of which open out onto the rooms and corridors of the Stasi former headquarters. We might see this cuboid installation as framing a space into which we enter, a space that in turn gives access to imaginary filmic spaces that we can inhabit visually, moving through the rooms of the prison with a mobile gaze. This conception of space as a container into which we enter situates space as an entity shaped by form, the frame of the cube, the frame of the screens, the frame of the screens within the screens, e.g. the rooms and corridors of the building. Jane and Louise Wilson have said that their "film work is about creating a physical environment, something which is more sculptural in its description of space". However, given that the juxtaposition of contradictory viewpoints in their work makes it impossible to establish stable spatial parameters, space in the Wilson's work would seem to be more dynamic than a conception of space as a formless field that requires objects to demarcate its boundaries.