Gregor Schneider: Die Familie Schneider [published on the Occasion of the Exhibition Held at 14 and 16 Walden Street, London E1 2AN, 2 October - 23 December 2004]In his first major project in the UK, German artist Gregor Schneider constructed a remarkable new work, bringing his long-standing interest in repression, reproduction and repetition to a very ordinary street in London's East End. Die Familie Schneider took place in neighbouring, identical houses - 14 and 16 Walden Street. The houses were open by appointment only and visitors - always two at a time - collected the front door keys from a small office on the same street. One visitor entered 14 Walden Street alone, whilst the other entered the neighbouring house. After a period of ten minutes, the visitors emerged, exchanged keys and entered the second house. At no time was there ever more than one visitor in each house. It is not easy to describe the heightening of sensation and the existential anxiety which many visitors felt as they turned a key in one of the nondescript doors and crossed the threshold from the street to the inside, making their way through the small kitchen and living room, up to the claustrophobic bathroom and bedroom with no windows on the first floor, and down to the dark spaces of the basement. Each house would evoke conflicting feelings of attraction and repulsion, of wanting to go further in, and wanting to immediately get out. In each was an identical woman, perpetually washing the same dishes; in each was a child, or a child-like person - wrapped placidly within a plastic bag; and in each was a man in a shower, engaged in a stark and lonely act of masturbation. An apprehensive setting encased it all, elusively disturbing, almost mimicking a familiar scene of lower middle class domesticity - but at the same time not quite right, not right at all. Amongst the visitors who made their way through the intensely claustrophobic rooms were the writers Andrew O'Hagan and Colm Tóibín. In the publication 'Gregor Schneider: Die Familie Schneider', their writings, presented alongside an extended series of Schneider's photographs, attest to the disturbing experience of these dark double houses. |
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15 Queens Terrace 16 Walden Street ANDREW O'HAGAN COLM Artangel aunt in Munster autumn of 2004 back room basement bathroom bay windows bedroom Bohreen Hill Booker Prize brother built Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation coal fires cold fireplace cream Die Familie Schneider East London eyes FAIRY Familie Schneider front room downstairs furniture ghosts glass gloss-painted doors Goethe Institut Golyiadkin green soap GREGOR SCHNEIDER Writings Head of Arts Henry Moore Foundation house in Bohreen James Lingwood kitchen know KUNSTSTIFTUNG living room London E1 2AN look memory Munster Hill mythical nightmare novel number O'HAGAN COLM TÓIBÍN oil-fired central heating Open by appointment Oscar Slater paraffin oil heater piece realise room for books Sadie Coles Schneider houses Schneider project second house Sian Emmison stairs Stanley Thomas Johnson SteidlMack storage heater strange tender fire tenement flat terrace of four things Thomas Johnson Foundation uncanny upstairs visitor entered walking wallpaper wanted wedding presents Whitechapel www.artangel.org.uk yellow window