After several days of travelling and walking through Lichtenberg, after visiting the Stasi historical site and museum and the Mies van der Rohe building, and after thinking a lot about our past and that of our neighbours, I came across a set of instructions for the construction of a box in the Stasi museum. A person who wished to observe the actions of others in secret could sit in this box, which could be placed on a truck. It was constructed in such a way that the observer could spend hours or even days in the box. The truck could be parked at various locations. I found the description fascinating because it was meticulously precise – everything had been thought of – and also because this entire endeavour, although malicious, also had something touching about it.
What goes through the mind of someone who works so intensively on the observation of other people?
I created drawings, which were based on photographs, to go along with the description of the construction of the box. All of this was then posted on A4 sheets on a construction site fence at a public location so that anybody who wished to recreate this box could do so.
