The plucky Camelia Gupta goes into places where ordinary mortals may fear to tread - this week, a really powerful Artangel commission in London.
Visitors, please note - this show is now sold out.
Die Familie Schneider is the first UK showing of German sculptor Gregor Schneider’s work. Commissioned by Artangel, Schneider takes over two identical neighbouring houses in an East London Street and remakes the interiors according to his own unique vision.
My instinct with this piece is tell you as little about it as possible. The element of surprise is a major, though not the only, source of Die Familie Schneider’s power.
But it’s not often that I feel obliged to offer warnings about art! This is a genuinely frightening experience.
What I’m not going to do in this review is tell you exactly what’s inside the houses. I think it’s best if you find out for yourself. I’m going to instead tell you what happened to me in Die Familie Schneider.
As I leave I’m nervous, I feel people are staring at me. They probably are, as right now I’m twitchy, disoriented, afraid of my own shadow. Returning the keys, I’m told that ‘most people have been pretty wobbly’, have needed to go and sit down with a cup of tea or something stronger. A couple of hours later I still don’t want to be alone or be without comforting distractions.
In an age where we often indeed pride ourselves on, our unshockability, this piece is genuinely, astonishingly, shocking.
You must book in advance; only on arrival at the Artangel office are you told the address. You are handed keys to the houses, given directions and sent on your way. I feel oddly abandoned by this.
I let myself in, wondering who I am to be letting myself into someone else’s house.
Shutting the door, I’m thus already a little nervous. The narrow corridors are claustrophobic. I hesitate in the doorway but my awareness that I only have 20 minutes to see both houses (one of several conditions of viewing) forces me on.
In the second house, I feel slightly braver. I wondered in the first house whether I was ‘allowed’ to interact with the inhabitants of the houses but felt too oppressed. In an embarrassingly quavery and hesitant voice, I hail the woman in the kitchen.
She ignores me. I’m not sure whether I want her to respond, as that would indicate that I belong in this world.
A world where violence seems to lurk at every edge.
There’s the terrifying sexual graffiti in the attic, visible only through the keyhole of locked door with, most worryingly, a locked child-gate placed in front of it. Was a child kept here? Does this connect to the secret passage and its grim destination?
On the other hand, being ignored has the effect of making me feel like a ghost, condemned to witness and absorb the horror but with no scope for action. Neither option appeals.
Die Familie Schneider is a masterfully manipulative environment. The control and direction of every minute detail is complete and unyielding.
Schneider’s precise instructions leave the outside of the houses untouched, presenting a normal face to the world in a metaphor disturbingly easy to connect to narratives of child abuse, serial murder and genocide. Unwelcome names come to mind: Fred and Rosemary West, Anne Frank, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady.
The Whitechapel location makes associations with Jack the Ripper impossible to resist. There’s an inescapable feeling that I’ve just missed some horrific event, or that violence has been perpetrated here.
I heard footsteps from my horrified vantage point near the attic, they were terrifying. Thinking now, it was probably merely another visitor.
Downstairs and into a tiny room, claustrophobic with its low ceiling. The carpeting muffles all sound. A pile of sweets and biscuits suggest that the possible presence of a child. In this muffling, tomb-like space, it’s a chilling touch.
As is the total refusal of personal details. In one room a picture is turned to the wall, in the hallway nails jut from the wall as if others have been removed.
The suffocating and tacky bedroom comes complete with nasty surprise, the bathroom forces us into unbearable voyeurism.
Schneider calls himself a sculptor; his medium is space. He re-makes structure to manipulate the spaces within and thus, our experience of the world. It’s a powerful practice.
Talking with the Artangel staff, we agree that on leaving, your worldview has been ‘Schneiderised’. You’re inclined to attribute sinister motivations, to wonder what’s going on behind apparently ‘normal’ facades. It’s an incredibly powerful, and perhaps unique, experience. Go see it and find out what I haven’t told you. There’s much more.
