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¬ work / file 13 (about)

 

 


 

 
 

november 9th 1989:
the berlin wall came down, a dividing line built in 1961 by ulbricht. of course people who wanted to go west faced a new barrier, border guards shot them when they tried to trespass the "Todesstreifen“ ("death stripe“). those who survived got imprisoned or were forced to work for the "ministerium of staatssicherheit“, also called stasi.

approximately 300000 persons were working "officially" for one of the most paranoid ministries of the "civilized world". before the wall came down, the ministry destroyed about 4 miles of collected files in one month.
an incredible amount of personal files survived when ddr citizens captured these ministries & took charge of them. later on a west german ministry organized the examination of these files & reassembled & reconstituted the destroyed remnants.

dimitroff strasse

citizens discovered how their most intimate friends spied on them, that they supplied the ministry with detailed information about their lives.

file 13 is a fictional attempt to collect information on persons who got entangled in this situation.
it is a recollection of scenes which were filed, put in order & then taken off the shelves, opened again for a search into the deeper structures of their personalised pasts,sometimes innocent, sometimes not.

maybe this version is a negative one, yet i wonder how misuse of power can be justified, elections faked & decisions imposed on people whether they approve of them or not. someone will eventually come up with questions nobody can answer.