In their videos and photographic work of the past decade, Jane and Louise Wilson have been focussing on architectural settings pregnant with meaning, on the aura surrounding certain historical locations. They address a contemporary sense of place, how a collective memory drawing from personal and official sources and the media in particular imbue places themselves with meaning, how historically or socially significant locations can “inhabit us and haunt us”(1).
‘Stasis City’ (1997), for instance, the two-screen video installation that earned the twins international recognition, was filmed at the headquarters of East German intelligence hastily abandoned with the demise of the Berlin Wall. The Wilsons captured the debris of the vast panoptic bureaucracy, “‘rooms full of files that existed in a limbo'” (2). The camera leads the way through a labyrinth of strip-lit passageways and vacant interrogation rooms with padded doors and zooms in on surveillance equipment. It penetrates and dismantles the secrecy surrounding the practices of the Staatssicherheitsdienst (homeland security). Relics hint at the use and purpose of the abandoned places and the machinery of a power focussing on the surveillance of its subjects.
The Wilson sisters state that their “film work is about creating a physical environment, something which is more sculptural in its description of space” (3). They have become known for their split-screen film installations, “multi-screen environment[s] in which moving images are thrown on hanging screens and open cubes”(4).
Their characteristic mode of choreographing and editing their film footage, in the Wilsons’ own words, “reflects [their] approach to narrative: it is about the filmed space, the filmic space and the physical space the viewer is in. All of these elements make it more interactive… The only narrative that exists comes through our connection to the space we are filming” (5). The choreography of their images is greatly inspired by directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Fassbinder, de Palma and Tarkovsky.
Most of their videos and photographic work is unpeopled, either by choice or out of externally imposed necessity, and “is presented in as near as possible 1:1 scale. It is up to the viewer to adopt the acting role in the pictured scene” (6). The Wilsons’ installations “confuse the real and the virtual, projected space and physical space, a sense of one’s own presence and the impossibility of penetrating, let alone belonging to, all these elsewheres up on the screens”(7).
So far, Jane and Louise Wilson have focussed on man-made, earth-bound spaces. Recently, however, there has been a shift towards those architectural environments in which mankind’s dream of space discovery was realised and where it still is happening. Their camera searches for the inanimate witnesses of the political, social and economical context of space discovery. They capture traces of the visions, the political context, the pressures and constraints involved in making that dream come true. They focus on the technology involved.
In 1999 the Wilson sisters filmed in Star City, the famous cosmonaut training facility just outside Moscow, producing a video work of the same name. They then travelled to Kazakhstan and the rocket launch site at the Russian Cosmodrome in Baikonur creating a four-screen installation named ‘Proton, Unity, Energy, Blizzard’ (2000). This work represents an exploration of the architecture of the three main Russian launch sites, Proton which follows a Proton rocket to its launch site, Unity (Soyuz) the launch site for all manned space missions and Energy (Energia), a site abandoned for over ten years, originally designed to carry the Russian space shuttle Blizzard (Buran) (8). The film ‘Dream Time’ (2001) finally documents “the launch of the first manned space mission to the International Space Station (ISS) from Baikonur Cosmodrom” (9). Taken together these installations present a powerful documentation of Russian space science, past and present.
Text by Carlotta Graedel Matthäi; quotations from:
(1) Searle, Adrian: “You are here”, in: The Guardian (London), 16.09.2003, p. 13
(2) Jane and Louise Wilson as quoted in: Adams, Tim: “Jane and Louise Wilson”, in: Special Reports, The Guardian (London), www.guardian.co.uk, Sunday 10.10.1999
(3) Lissoni, Andrea: “Interview with Jane and Louise Wilson”, in: Gravitazero (Italy)
(4) Searle, p.12
(5) Lissoni
(6) Stange, Raimar: “Jane and Louise Wilson”, in: Art at the Turn of the Millennium. Taschen, 1999, p. 542
(7) Searle, p. 13
(8) Wilson, Jane and Louise: “Artist’s Story - Space Base”, in: [a-n] Magazine for Artists, www.anweb.co.uk, 07.2002
(9) ibid.
Personal Resume / Biography
The English identical twins Jane and Louise Wilson were born in 1967. Between 1986 and 1989 Louise completed her BA in Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, Jane at Newcastle Polytechnic. For their art degree shows at different universities, they submitted identical works titled ‘Garage’, featuring photographs in which one of them is trying to drown the other while gagging herself in a noose her sister is tightening around her neck. Neville Wakefield recognizes their mirror shows as animating “the dilemma at the core of their work: both of and not of a single mind, the Wilsons share … their practice as artists”(1).
In 1992 the Wilson sisters graduated from Goldsmith's College, London, with an MA in Fine Art. In the following year they won Barclays Young Artist Award. In 1996 a scholarship granted by DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) took them to Germany where they worked in Berlin and Hannover. In 1999 Jane and Louise Wilson were nominated for the Turner Prize.
The Wilsons have exhibited widely around the world including America, Japan, England, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, both in commercial and public galleries.
The sisters “mainly use video for their art, but also bring in photography and three-dimensionally presented architectural objects”(2). The scope of their art has moved from an early analysis of women’s role in contemporary society and the workings of horror and action movies to an investigation into recent history as manifest in architectural sites.
Jane and Louise Wilson are represented by Lisson Gallery, London. They live and work in London.
Text by Carlotta Graedel Matthäi; quotations from: (1) Wakefield, Neville: “Jane & Louis Wilson”, in: ArtForum International Magazine, 10.1998, pp.112-113, (2) Stange, Raimar: “Jane and Louise Wilson”, in: Art at the Turn of the Millennium. Taschen, 1999, p. 542.
References
Schwabsky, Barry. “Jane and Louise Wilson.” Artforum 37, no. 9 (May 1999): 187.
Anton, Saul. “Jane and Louise Wilson.” art/text 63 (1998): 91-92.
Wakefield, Neville. “Openings: Jane and Louise Wilson.” Artforum 37, no. 2 (October 1998): 112-13.
Kunstverein Hannover, Germany, and Berliner Künstlerprogramm, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, Germany. Jane & Louise Wilson: Stasi City (1997). Exhibition catalogue, text by Paolo Colombo and Elizabeth Johns; interview by Raimund Kummer.
Hilty, Greg. “Greg Hilty on Jane and Louise Wilson.” Frieze, no. 18 (September/ October 1994): 40-43.
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