Artist:
Nina Fischer (born 1965 in Emden, Germany) and Maroan el Sani (born 1966 in Duisburg, Germany) (both live and work in Berlin, Germany).

Materials:

7 min double screen projection.

Description:
“[Film] about the empty space of the former East German parliament in the [Palast der Republik], Berlin: The ‘Volkskammersaal.’ This area was closed for public during the GDR times, and as well as after the closure of the PDR, after the wall came down. We show an exclusive view of the space and as well a view through the milky windows on the city center of Berlin. The work manifests the vacuum-situation of the PDR—as the most well known remnant of the GDR—and at the same time the fading history of the former East Germany.”
—”PDR—Weissbereich,” website of Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani.

“Film made when asbestos was being removed from the building; Fischer and el Sani established [a] long-term project in which they would document the palace’s transformation. In 2001, when the asbestos removal inside the left-hand wing with the Volkskammer was finished, the artists installed tracks on the floor for a video camera, enabling them to record the palace in 360 degrees. Two perspectives were recorded: one directing the view of the camera lens to the inside of the building, and the other pointed towards the outside through the blurred glass.”
—Hanna Katharina Göbel, The Re-Use of Urban Ruins: Atmospheric Inquiries of the City (New York: Routledge, 2014), 122.