The “Lern- und Gedenkort Kaßberg Gefängnis” is a permanent historical exhibition located the former Kaßberg Prison, in Chemnitz. The prison has a long history, from 1866 and through the Nazism time, but the biggest focus of the exhibition is its usage during STASI time (1952 – 1989). Most prisoner at this time were there for political reason. And many of them were eventually ransomed from East to West Germany, through a sheer commerce of person put on by the two governments. I was tasked to program and produce all the media installations throughout the exhibition.
After the renovation for its present destination (only a wing of the original building is destined to the museum), the structure of the prison is still present and evident. The individual cells, shown in their claustrophobic size, are used as exhibition space. In each cell, the full biography of past prisoners is told through pictures, texts, objects and a lot of interviews with the actual contemporary witnesses. By reconstructing these piercing stories, a light is shed on this historical periods. The typical module for the media stations is a projection and a touchscreen interface, through which the visitors can choose which interviews and clips they will see.
Though the cells are small, an astounding amount of information is scattered on the walls. Much historical work was done in putting together these biographies, and making it all fit a global curatorial scope. For me, it the amount of media and cont was also a big effort. I had to deal with over 50+ individual stations, be they projections, touchscreens or audio stations.
More than a “walk-through” experience, the Kaßberg exhibition is almost a big archive, a big library full of information, that one can visit multiple times, to deepen one or another aspect of the theme. The archival function is sometimes really explicit, like an archival room, in which the visitor can look up through a media station the official acts of ransom of the prisoners.
But the main bulk of the data is presented through the voices of real person, that resonate through the central stairs of the building. It’s these concrete biographies that make history real, the choices some people made (to protest, to try to escape the regime) and how the government responded (by giving sentences for minimal crimes, by bureaucratizing and making the ransom a business).
The multimedia-level of the exhibition is omnipresent, but rather discrete. It’s a device to navigate further into history, and doesn’t need to overdramatize anything. The real work happened in background – the interaction with the curation and content team, in order to gather all the texts, photos, video, subtitles, and the interaction with the technic team, in order to have all these station up and running on the bespoke hardware.
CREDITS
Client: Lern- und Gedenkort Kaßber Gefängnis
Curation, Design, Project Management: beier+wellach
Graphic Design: Bailey und Bailey
Production, Installation: id3d-berlin
Media programming and production: Michele Pedrazzi
