the wire mother
It drips evenly in the dark.
But the tap is turned off.
The washbasins are only remnants,
memories of a time when hands were being washed here
and children were prevented of sleeping
by dripping taps at night.
What remains is the cool rigor,
the distant atmosphere of interpersonal relationships
and the barren reality of an upbringing à la Harry
Harlow's "wire mother".
"the wire mother" is a site-specific room installation. It was created in the frame of a project in the former children's home in Cologne-Sülz. The exchange with former home residents served as the basis for the work and the work title. They described the loveless and cleanliness-oriented educational methods of the 1950s Years. Studies and experiments by the behavioral scientist Harry Harlow from 1957 were also consulted.
Harlow pointed based on his experiments with wire and cloth mothers as surrogate mothers for baby monkeys the high relevance of parent-child relationships. Goal of the room installation was to show the makeshift emotional care after the Second World War in the children's home Cologne-Sülz and to make it tangible to the viewer spatially as well as audiovisually.
