Conspiracy Dwellings [public art project]

The Conspiracy Dwellings is the name given to the secret spy cells in East Germany from which the Stasi and their informants operated. They were set up as a means of surveillance by the Ministry of State Security (Stasi) for the purpose of spying on the country’s own population. My visual arts project investigates a city (Erfurt) from the perspective of its 509 conspiracy dwellings active from 1980 – 1989, and benefited from my collaboration with German social historians and archivists using files recovered from the State Archive of the Ministry of State Security.

The project is situated in the fields of the moving image, contemporary history and surveillance, and considers the architecture of surveillance as material memory and as ‘counter monument’.

‘Conspiracy Dwellings’ exists as a public art project consisting of my 90 min video work, ‘Portrait of Erfurt’ and sound installations derived from city walks. Located in six public buildings in the former East German city of Erfurt, the project maps the city from the perspective of its conspiracy dwellings.