Host: What does Big Brother see, while he is watching?
Simon Menner is talking to you about this and uncovering
images from the secret Stasi archives. He was born 1978 in Southern Germany and
now he lives and works in Berlin.
He does a lot of stuff with photography and
history and he has been researching for three years in Stasi files and images
and he is going to show us why this is still relevant today or even maybe more
relevant than ever. Give him a warm welcome.
[Audience applause]
I was told to use this rather than the lavalier mics so I hope it works.
First a disclaimer - I'm an artist. I'm not a historian
so my approach to the material I'm going to show is
somewhat different from what you might expect from a regular historian
but we can discuss this as we go on. Very briefly before I am going to
show you images I found at the archive of the Stasi and some very few
archives I found at the BND.
I'm going to show you three bodies of work that brought me to my interest in the Stasi.
I am a trained artist, I'm a photographer and normally I'm
doing things like this and I'm very interested in the
relationship of what perception does within the context of modern conflict.
It turns out more importantly perception is a battlefield and fear is a weapon.
This is not just a set of landscape images it is actually set of photographs
for which I had support of the German army. They supported me with snipers.
They were hiding in the landscape aiming at the camera and therefore at the viewer.
So the sniper would be and in most of the pictures from the series there's actually
almost no trace to be seen from the sniper but this is the way a sniper
looks within the landscape.
They were ordered to aim at me even though I couldn't see them sometimes.
When were posing I told them well just don't
hide behind a tree so I don't see you. They told me "no no don't worry we are
aiming at you" [Audience laughs]
Of course the whole thing is artificial because they would
never choose this kind of setting and this kind of environment to posed a
threat - there's a sniper here or here but this is something that
really plays an important role in today's conflicts.
You try to occupy your opponents mind and influence
his or her behaviour in that way through creating fear.
That's another set of images. It's based on books by the US army
on how to construct booby traps out of ordinary objects.
Here a TV set or radio if it is switched it on its blows up. A box or pipe.
As an artist I find this image very intriguing because there is one
famous painting by Magritte; 'this is not a pipe'.
Actually this is not a pipe. It's supposed to look like a pipe
But be aware that from the sixties from the US army and these handbooks are
now out there and used by opposing forces they encounter and the whole
story behind these manuals is you're supposed to create fear in your opponent.
Here is a German chocolate bar. Break it off it blows up in your face or a tea kettle.
The more ordinary the objects are the more terrifying it becomes
because once you realize that there's no way for you to avoid this
idea of fear, everything is dangerous.
The other side does this as well. This is from videos I found online.
This is the last video frame before the blast. The last frame
before car bomb, roadside bomb or something like this explodes.
The same here. It's the same technique.
The more research I did on this big topic of fear and perception within conflict
I started to think more and more about the topic of surveillance because the
interesting aspect would be to look at images of surveillance because that
would show us these mechanisms from the other side.
But the strange thing is we talked so much about surveillance and much of what we talked
about is image based so big brother is watching you. That has something to do
with images but we take it for granted that there's nothing for us to see.
Big Brother is watching us but it's hidden behind some curtains.
I came to realize that actually with the unique history of
Germany we have this huge opportunity in the Stasi archives that are accessible to
the public to try to show what Big Brother actually sees and I approached them
because I could only find written references to images they have and could
never find images, do they still exist and they said sure come over.
And that was the start of a three-year research project.
First I am going to show you images I was
in the end not really interested in. Images we know exist and from now on
that's authentic Stasi material. There some from the Czech Republic CSR.
I'll point them out and there some from the BND and I'll point those out as well.
That is something we expect to see. Shots taken through button holes and
surveillance in the streets. That's the US embassy in East Berlin
and the entrance doors were under constant surveillance with photo
cameras and video cameras. Be aware in the 80's video equipment was not that
sophisticated so at night time the Stasi recorded eight hours of darkness but
it still ended up at the files. That's the state of mind we're talking about so
everyone was photographed. Quite often we find post boxes where each and
everyone who's posting a letter is photographed no matter who he or she is.
Even if it's an elderly lady. Remember these images because I'm going to
reference them later. I was more interested in something like this.
The internal view. Roughly two years ago I was able to
publish a book and now I'm going to follow the structure within the book
because I was really interested in how do you become a spy and encounted a lot of
material that was meant for training purposes. These images are from a
training session on how to disguise yourself as regular citizens.
Which I found strange because normally that's nothing you should
have to learn, but still. Then you have a soldier, these ordinary citizens.
Some of them look like they live now in Berlin amongst the hipsters like this one.
That's entitled 'The Western tourist'.
Now the tourists is like the photographer so the Stasi photograph something
that tries to look like a photographer.
Women worked for the Stasi as well and so the same thing
So disguising manuals - what do you need to dress up like this and in what
circumstances would you use something like this. He looks like Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy I think. Be aware that's not meant to be funny that was
not meant to be seen by anyone. That was meant to train agents and we
are going to see later that was actually used. Here we have a hitchhiker at a motorway
around Berlin and that's from the CSR archives which I was granted access to
earlier this year. They did the same thing. It's not just
something the Stasi did, they did it as well. Then you had other aspects of
disguise like how to wear a wig. How to stick a fake moustache.
Due to privacy concerns the images had to be pixelated but I could see
the faces while researching the archives. Much funnier actually.
Again from the CSR you could also disguise cars.
You could draw something that's from a from a steel mill in the CSR.
And then, a disguised stroller with a video camera.
It's actually a video camera from Japan and they imported
this type of surveillance equipment quite frequently. And then you
encounter other material like how to transmit secret signals and how to transmit codes.
The codes are not known now but still the photos exist and they have a
strange beauty in them. Once you got your training and then you have to
be taught how maybe to arrest someone.
You first knock the door and then you arrest him.
Notice the piece of cloth on the floor because he didn't want to ruin his white shirt.
Maybe he wants to fight so you have to fight. [Audience laughs]
But the Stasi always wins. Again they CSR took things very seriously.
Things there seem to be escalating much quicker so you have to shoot people.
Again it quickly escalates and he has to be shot. When you know that
you have to be taught how to to follow people around. Sometimes you
find very elaborate stories where you follow people around. Just a very
short exception. So she's at the bakery and then she goes to a doctor's office
which is already something Stasi maybe shouldn't know and then she does a phone call.
Here you see she's smiling at the camera of course the whole thing is
staged for colleagues but this is sometimes very lengthy.
You see this guy shopping and then shopping and walking Alexanderplatz, meeting
another guy. It's like a photo love story. Then they take the car and he gets out the car in
the middle of the woods and he walks. Another car comes and then they meet and
why did you take such pictures. What's the point of that but still
that ends up at the archive and is part of the training operation.
So now the training is done and this then is a real surveillance photograph.
The black arrow, that's supposedly the person they were shadowing.
Then you see we are not in the training manual
but we are already one step ahead and that's then the real material.
He or she is followed around the country and again
Czech Republic you have ordinary citizens being shadowed entering a house.
With the shadowing comes also the breach of privacy and here we have the room of
a teenager which looks very innocent to us but I'm very positive that, I guess
it's a guy, he never entered university in East Germany. Due to the fact that they
could prove that he was a fan of Wily Coyote and the United States or so they
thought they could prove. They took such images as evidence for your
thinking which is a problem of a surveillance operation I would argue.
Here we have what might be the biggest Madonna fan
in all of communist Eastern Europe.
Same thing. Probably would never be able to study law or medicine.
You frequently have images such as this and that was classified as
Western pornography and the funny thing about this classification is very
often you find files that read Western pornography
and the photographs are missing. [Audience laughs]
Someone went to this apartment, documented everything, archived it maybe
the guy was prosecuted and when there was no one was looking they took the pictures.
Which then shows the absurd nature of the system.
For me this is a very key image, it's a set of images
but that's actually one of the images
that brought me to contacting the Stasi archives. I read about those images.
This is a Polaroid as you can see by the white background and as a matter of
fact Stasi frequency purchased Polaroid films or confiscated Polaroid film sent
to East Germany and the reason for that was when they broke into people's homes
and you should never find out, the easiest thing was you break-in, you look
around, what looks interesting you take a Polaroid and with that you are able to put
everything back in its original position.
This is an absolute brutal image because that shows
the deepest possible breach of privacy imaginable.
And most people in fact never found out that their apartment was searched and that
was absolutely illegal even in East Germany and it was very revealing last year
a German TV station thought it's a good idea to hook me up with a former Stasi
general and I told him about the Polaroid's and he said "Yeah but please keep in mind
I never broke into people's apartments." I said did you order it?
"Yes I ordered it but I never broke into people's houses" I thought what stupid excuse is that?
Who then is responsible because normally the excuse is always I was ordered to do it
and his excuse was I just ordered them, I don't really... why would they do it. I
just ordered it. It was not my intention.
That was revealing to me the state of mind within such a system.
So you have folders and folders of those Polaroids
and when they found something incriminating they might have returned a
few days later with the police and search warrant because they needed a
search warrant even in East Germany. Now we realize that even though it looks
funny the way they disguise themselves it's meant seriously and it's a terrible
brutal system. Which you also see in these images from the CSR where people
are forced to stage their own attempt of fleeing the country. They were made to stage
the thing they were arrested for, even a young child was made to re-enact their
failed attempt to flee the country. And that is brutal.
Sometimes you find images that are completely out of any category. Like a guinea pig.
I told you earlier to remember the postbox with the old lady.
That's an image from one of those files so you have a surveillance
operation of a post boxes, you see its taken from a high angle maybe out of a private apartment and
then you have shot after shot and then two pictures of these guinea pig and then
the surveillance operation continues. What I read out of that is he was in a
private apartment and was bored. He lies flat on the ground, takes two shots and
then continues the surveillance operation knowing that the material is going to
end up at the archive and gets his archive number. That's German bureaucracy I guess.
Very revealing. So who are these guys? That's actually a British spy.
There were some officially registered Western spies within Eastern Germany.
The Russians had the same thing for West Germany and the Stasi's job was to folow and document what
they were doing. They couldn't do anything to them, only document.
You find many of these images. Like a spy taking a picture of a
spy in an endless circle of surveillance. What's very revealing is the fact
that I tried to gain access to their material - it's still classified.
I'm very positive I know what the image shows. It's pretty much the same thing.
I tried to understand what these people are thinking but it turns out
even though they were fighting each other they seem to share a very common state of mind.
That looks like the endpoint of surveillance, no its not.
It's one step further. It's Stasi agents watching Stasi agents watching other people.
That's a triangle of surveillance.
Common as well. Never be sure about your colleagues. They could be up to
something so better spy on them as well.
I present you the absolute endpoint of surveillance which is
the surveillance selfie. [Audience laughs and applauds]
I give you another one.
They knew it was going to end up at the archives.
So they are spying on themselves, spying on other while spying on themselves. It's almost medative.
Who are these people? Now we are at the internal view. The Stasi looks at itself.
Here's a group photo. Remember this guy, we encounter him later.
That happens to be the phone surveillance unit.
Highest-ranking officials here, that's the boss of the whole bunch and of
course the Stasi, it's Eastern Europe they like medals and awards ceremony.
Flowers, a medal a piece of paper.
This guy again and he gets really shaby flowers and a piece of paper.
That's odd - see the wax seal and it is burned at the side.
Because he was knighted. A knight of the phone surveillance unit.
To the non Germans that's a symbol of a code of law in Germany.
He knew they were breaking the law
and they're mocking it with this ceremony so now you are the knight of
the phones surveillance unit. Congratulations hahaha what a good joke.
Another set of images which is very revealing is this. Strange finding in the Stasi archive.
A strange combination. See the bishop and the soccer player and back there
with the blue shirt. That's a Party Youth member and then see the ballerina.
Strange. The guy in a suit; it's his birthday and he's the boss of them.
These are all highest-ranking Stasi officials and they surprise him with a
birthday party and the surprise is to dress up as those people you put under surveillance.
Party Youth, soccer player, the ballerina. Beautiful, very beautiful
Soccer fan. Of course you have to put them under surveillance.
A doctor. Of course who cares about a right to be quiet of doctors.
A judge, you have to put a judge under surveillance.
Then there is this dress up. Hardly to be understood outside Germany.
He's dressed up as a peace activist
and he wears this 'sword to ploughshares' sticker at his head and some other peace
stickers there and he is very proud of himself.
Why, because it was such a successful costume.
I think where did he get the costume from. The easiest thing for someone like him is
to take it from someone they put in jail. Because you could at least lose access
to university for wearing one of these stickers, or serve some time in jail.
You could lose access to good housing and everything. Why is he able to mock it?
Because he's the one who would decide whether or not you lose access and this
is the a terrible thing about these images.
They're very revealing.
These images are now 25/30 years old. Why do I think these images are
still relevant today? It's because of something like this.
There was a short period after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It fell in November 9th
and the Stasi wasn't dissolved until early January.
So there was a very short period of time were the Stasi could try to destroy material.
They managed to destroy a huge bunch of material.
Not a very important set except foreign espionage.
That's almost gone but if it would have been up to them that would have been the
fate of all these images. Destruction. We would have never been able to look at
these images. Even though we don't know what these images stand for.
Maybe that's that's a group of gay men and they infiltrated it and it was compromising
to one of their colleagues that they had infiltrated it. They did things like that.
But they tried to destroyed it. Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall
why do you still think this material is very relevant. I'm going to show you something
even more special and more rare than the materials I showed you just now.
It's this. Over a course of year I tried to convince
BND to grant me access to their material which would be amazing because
in Germany we have these one society with the two opposing systems so the
view on the cold war would be absolutely astonishing if you would be
able to look at all the material. After a year they got a call and told me
that we've got something for you, come over.
They have a small section in Berlin so I went there will my scanner and
they gave me that I would call them 14 most boring pictures of the BND history.
It's a matchbox.
I looked at these images and I was like what do they show and this guy was very serious
and told me 'Unfortunately I can't tell you because the information is still classified'.
[Audience laughter]
Back then he told me as far as he knows these are the only images they ever released.
So there's a huge problem I have with this of course.
They can decide which images to show.
One of the guys I was in contact with there told me of course we have
these disguise pictures and dress up and things like that but keep in mind
back then he might have been the lowest in the hierarchy and now he might be
head of the department or the one who brought in the guy who is now the head
of the department. Of course not in their interest for
these images to be released.
Yeah, but its in my interest
and our interest as to decide which images are worth looking at or not.
There's another problem with images like this.
We have almost nothing that is accessible from the Western archives.
This is rare, this is special. It looks like shit but it's very special.
But we have a trove from the Eastern archive and that's always like the miracle
and when one of the Eastern former communist countries
decides whether we should limit access to our former Stalinist archives we say 'No!
don't do that. we must be open' but what happens when we have access to just one
side and see all the terrible things they are doing and have no access to the other side?
I'm not saying that the BND did the same terrible things the Stasi did but the
BND was certainly breaking our laws as well. But it does look more innocent
because we only have access to a very terrible looking archive
and if we look to the West Germany's it's like nothing there, must be fine and
that's a terrible thing. There's a lot wrong with that
So I'm almost at the end, I was rushing through.
I can show you two videos from Czech archive audio isn't important because I was too quick
Sorry maybe that is not going to work.
It seems things escalated much quicker in CSR.
Life in the CSR must have been very dangerous.
He has weapons every where.
But the best thing comes now. [Audience laughs]
Who would carry something like that there.
[Audience applause]
That's a very long film that's just a short part.
If you are ever attacked by someone with a chair.
That's like the six or seventh time he shows that. He shows it again and then
it's going to be used but look closely how the technique they just learned is used.
Do this the next time you are attacked by some one with a chair.
Now he's going to be attacked by a chair.
Watch carefully he implements it quite properly.
Well he didn't really look. It's a long film and things
always escalates very quickly.
Two very long shots and you are supposed to spot them.
They are are unnecessarily long.
[Audience laughter]
Of course they find the black guy smuggling.
He explains in English 'Do you have more like that
and he says no no ,no no
and still the porn is still in the shot. And then he tells him yes but it's
going to be very serious if you don't confess now.
Black guy says no I don't have anything to confess.
The guy on the left get suspicious. He doesn't want to sign his confession.
He gets suspicious. Very, very suspicious
Fortunately the camera man made the move to the left or
not to zoom in on the penis. No no he doesn't have anything but it turns out
it turns out he has something because he's black and suspicious-looking.
Ah! He is moving his arm.
It turns out his arm is not broken.
Sorry that was somewhat long but I rushed through everything else.
For some reason he hides batteries in his cast.
[Audience laughs and applauds]
He could bring in the watches but you better hide the batteries because wooo. Any questions?
[Applause]
Host: Thank you Simon: I hope you got what you paid for.
Host: Maybe before we start questions and answers everybody who wants to leave, leave now.
Host: We will take one minute so you can leave
and all the others who want to stay have it quiet for the Q&A.
Host: And remember to use the rating system
Simon: I brought postcards because we have to make fun of them as much as we can.
Simon: It's all the same motif but take as many as you want.
Host: There are two microphones for the questions and answers, no four if you need them.
Host: 1,2 and we have questions from the internet.
Host: OK we will start with you
Audience member: Just a short question please.
First of all thanks for the wonderful talk was very very interesting.
Can you give us the title of your book please.
Simon: Oh yeah, Google my name. It's available in your
local bookstore or if you want Amazon. It still available but not many copies left.
It's just Top Secret and then Simon Menner. My family doesn't write that many books.
Host: thank you. Audience member: Would you be so kind to
show us back that photo with the Coyote
ugly and American flag because I thought I saw Yugoslav air transport logo on the...
There you see it. He flew with, now it's called Air Serbia.
Simon: Yeah that must have been the reason Audience member: I just wanted to check that out thanks
Host: We have a question from the internet.
Internet host: Yes Frankie2 is asking how does this compare to todays surveillance?
Simon: The problem is, in a way, that's a treasure trove but it's a very weird one.
If I could freely choose what material to look at I would definitely try
to look at the last two weeks of NSA surveillance like we all would.
but unfortunately that is as close as as we can get
to this kind of material. Keep in mind, back in its day the Stasi was
at least as sophisticated as the BND. In fact there were
more advanced in the technologies they used. The Stasi would definitely use
the same techniques BND and CIA
and everyone else uses today. They would try to listen in on our phone conversations.
That might not be the right material to look at it from a technological point of view
but I think this material is very interesting and important if you want to find something
out about their state of mind. Which is absurd but keep in mind the excuse
you hear from the NSA. They just want to protect the law and that's why they are
breaking the law. That's an excuse you regularly find with the Stasi as well.
You find parallels and that's why it's important to look at this material
even though it's very old. The whole archive consists somewhere
between one and two million photographs which absurdly little
if you think that the system was in operation for almost 40 years.
That's fifty thousand pictures a year and they had
85,000 agents. From todays standards that's nothing but today they would be
far more sophisticated I guess.
Host: We have a question over there
Audience member: Firstly, thank you for your talk.
You showed that some of this information had been destroyed or at least attempts were
made to destroy and much of it was but there's a still a lot left to look through.
What happens in future generations when, given that now surveillance is done all
digitally, the Stasi had some number of weeks from when the wall fell to when they had actually
disband and they had time to to to destroy things. Given how quickly and easy
it is to erase digital information what would you say to the people
coming after you,
future generations who might want to try and find similar things in dissolved
surveillance organizations. Are they completely stuffed?
Simon: Unless there is going to be a
revolution they are not going to be able to look at anything that would be my guess.
You need this abrupt shift in the whole system
that decapitates this operation and so they lost everything and now it's frozen in time.
The guy at the BND told me it's up to us to decide what we reveal and
what not because we have a veto. Of course nothing is then revealed, ever.
As long as this stays the policy and it is the policy currently
everywhere from what I understand you're
not going to be able to look at anything. I'm not very optimistic in that respect.
Audience member: Hello, thanks for your talk.
How did you decide what faces to anonymise and which not to?
Simon: With the Czech Republic archive images I did it and that's weird you can do
whatever you want which is terrible in a way.
The Stasi images, the archive had to decide and it decided
on the basis when you work in an official position, in the German law
when you work in an official position in times of historical importance
like that you lose your privacy rights.
You don't share the same privacy rights. So once we could find written evidence
that the person shown in the image was working for the Stasi they lost the
right to privacy. If the slightest doubt remained it had to be pixeled so it wasn't
done by me. The German privacy rights are very strict.
Audience member: You said when you talked
about surveillance watching each other and surveilling each other that this
would be something like the highest state of surveillance but in a sense don't you
think there's now a much higher state and also that before things were much more
clear. Everybody knew that there was a regime trying to stay in power and tried to
put down everybody. Now wouldn't it be a situation where they don't
even have to break the law, they just make it legal to surveil. We can see in
France now with the law on intelligence that passed just after the Charlie
murders and now we've got the murders again and you've got people that have to
stay in their homes because the intelligence has said that they might
protest and they don't have to go through a Judge. They're actually
making it legal and not even have to break the law and also where people
actually surveil each other.
Simon: That's Facebook today. The general problem with
surveillance operations I would argue and hope someone from the BND is here
to come forward and talk to them because it would really like to find out.
I would argue that this type of surveillance cannot work. What you're trying to find
proof for is a state of mind, his thoughts. It's not something you did but some things
you think about or you think you might want to do.
I'm a photographer and I know how bad photography is.
You were looking at images of landscape where no sniper was visible and each one of you saw it.
That's how bad photography is as an evidence and this can be proved for
everything and nothing. Could be proof.
Audience member: They just write a paper to the police and he just says okay they're
dangerous and they have to stay at home.
Simon: Yes but they need proof or evidence for now. You leave behind such a trail of
evidence yourself that could be read somewhere in the future.
What happens in 10 years when the US like smoking and
drinking isn't socially acceptable anymore. What happens to you then with
your Facebook entry that's twenty years old then, it's a weird system.
Host: We have another question from the internet
Internet host: Yes somebody from from IRC
is asking if you have tried to contact other agencies.
Simon: Yes, like the BND which was not very successful. With these spies taking pictures of
spies I tried with the British. I know these pictures still exists. I know where
they exist but, sorry. Czech Republic I was asked by the Institute to
approach them but it was very difficult that's too lengthy to explain now.
It was very difficult working with them
language wise and because of the structure of the archive itself.
They were very open and so if you want to do more research on something like that
go to the Czech Republic's first because it's much easier to work with them on
the bureaucratic level than with the Germans but the Germans in a way are more organized.
That's the Germans!
Audience member: How hard was it to get the material although it is not classified any more
how much time did you invest?
Simon: The hardest time was waiting periods in between
requests because German bureaucracy takes forever.
I'm from West Germany but now I have a huge file in this archive because they compile everything so
they keep track of every picture you looking at. The funny thing is
it's not hard. You can do it as well. You don't have to be a researcher and
the archive considers research a basic human right which I learned then and it's
a very convenient thing. There are some elderly former Stasi agents who spend their retirement researching.
something, they can do it. The weird thing was that most of the pictures
no one's looked at before. That could be proven because they keep track of
everything. It's very easy, very lengthy process but very easy.
Audience member: When you decided to visit the archives did you
have to apply for a certain corner in the archive
or could you just walk in and say show me all your pictures?
Simon: No, it was very open they might have
closed off behind me somewhat because for them it was strangely overwhelming the
amount of feedback they got after my book came out and they want to be left alone I think.
You have to formulate a theme quite clearly for me but since this was new
back then, for them as well, it was surveillance and photography which is a very broad topic.
Now they received quite a few requests like we want to see what Simon Menners saw
and they don't accept something like this. So you have to come up with something more clever.
Audience member: How much time did you spend in their dungeons?
Simon: Three years on and off but it's mostly waiting in between so be patient.
Audience member: Modern state agencies including NSA and BND have this mentality of
collect all passive intelligence and has this ability to minimize the impact
of the damage that there's no human eyes looking at specific piece of surveillance.
Of course we know this is not true and they can zero in when they want to.
As an archivist how do you try to understand the
state of mind when you have so much data, possibly unprocessed data, and how do you
get into the mind of filtering through this bureaucratic censorship of not just
no documents but a hundred million documents.
Simon: One has to be
very careful with such material because you look through their eyes and that's
dangerous and that's why I try not to provide that much "background
information" because the "background information" and most of the images has
text complied by Stasi agents so theres already guilty or not guilty written in the text.
I don't want to look at these pictures through their eyes but still I find it very
revealing to look at the raw material and the Stasi would have
collected everything in bulk if they would have been able. They opened every parcel to East
Germany, every letter. Paranoia wise they were several steps ahead of the NSA.
They had a university and when studying there you could do your PhD but you
were not allowed to keep your notes
you took during the day. They had to be locked into lockers that had doors on two sides.
You lock them in and they will copy that night and you were not allowed to
keep your PhD thesis because the moment you wrote it was classified top secret
and that's paranoia. It really is paranoia.
I cannot prove it and that's the problem with the whole thing,
one side remains closed.
You cannot prove otherwise. My guess would be they're quite
happy with the situation, that you cannot prove otherwise.
Because they can always say we did something else.
Well we can't tell you but not like this. It's always very weak but from the state of mind insane.
Audience member: What is the copyright of these pictures?
Are they public domain, can I use them for internet memes?
Simon: Well no. Unfortunately most of the pictures on my website are low resolution
which the archive doesn't like but it's there.
The problem is there's a law that covers this archive. It's not part of the
archive sphere in Germany, it has its own law and the law was written early
90's by lawmakers. We all know them and love them. They never thought about
the fact that an artist might come along and show them. So the law covers publication.
Once you have access to the archive you are allowed to publicize it.
Nothing else is stated. But you're not allowed to hand over the
files and I had lengthy debates with the archive what that could mean because it
when you have it on their website you hand out the files - it;s publicizing it. No no no no.
I said what's the difference? We don't really know but.... Tricky.
And so many people copied it from my website which I think is good.
Host: Having a look at my watch I think we have one more question here two here.
Simon: I'm here the next three days look at me I might not remember your face but you
might remember my bald head so talk to me
Audience member: Were you able to access files other than images?
Audio recordings of this phone surveillance for example?
Simon: That's a very tricky thing. You could listen to those
but getting them is almost impossible because German privacy laws again.
Their argument is whenever you speak you
could reveal something private and that's their argument even though you might be
Erich Honecker or Helmut Kohl but still it could be private
what you're saying. That's why they could never release something, you would
never be allowed to release its stating thats Erich Honecker because it could be private.
So it's a strange law but no one's going to change it any more.
Host: And the last question over here
Audience member: I'm interested how you always know what shown by the photographs?
Were there captions like spy spying on spy or brought about by an explanation by yourself?
Simon: It's gazillions of kilometres of files and just a very few photographs so
there's always a huge amount of background information. The greatest
thing and I am absolutely thankful towards, it was only ladies working at the
archive, really at the archive handing me the files and giving me the copies because
the most important thing and whenever you want to work with an
archive the trickiest part is how do you find something you don't know exists.
Because you can't ask for it. I'm really looking for...
is there a birthday party? You will never ask for something like this but once
you've earned the trust of the people working at the archive they provide you and provided
me with these images because they knew in which direction I was looking for material.
There was always in most cases there was background information.
There's a weird set of a dead swan which I didn't include in the talk.
It's a set of 4 images of a dead swan. It was only known that it was found
in the vault that was owned by Erich Mielke the head of Stasi personally.
It's four images of a grave of a dead swan with
GDR flags around it. That's very famous for being the biggest mystery in
the Stasi files because nothing can be found about these images.
I didn't include them in the talk but it's a dead swan, very mysterious.
Must have been important!
Host: So thank you Simon very, very much.
[Audience applause]