Isolation Wing

I wanted to create something using the powerful descriptions written by Ulrike Meinhof of her experiences during the eight months she spent in the isolation wing of Ossendorf prison, where she lived for 24 hours a day in a constantly lit room separated from any contact with the outside world.

Her descriptions of losing her sense of language are especially emotive considering that, at least in one point in her life, she was at her core a writer. It's easy to imagine her losing her sense of identity as the use of language that defined her life was stripped away.

There is also something incredibly relevant now about these descriptions, given the similar experience the entire world has gone through throughout Covid. It makes this easier to understand and empathise with, adding a personal note connecting this and the work I produced from it to almost everyone alive now.

I was looking to replicate the overwhelming nature of the experience Meinhof described. It would have to be typographical to incorporate her descriptions. I tried to find a typeface that reflected the sense of being dragged down into psychosis; losing your personality and your grip on reality. Rather than being clearly legible, it would need to be aggressive, fading away from rationality, and feel unlike anything someone would naturally write as to make its author indiscernible and lost.

If I were using this as a key part of my FMP I would try to develop my own typeface to fit this, but this was a quicker piece to help develop a larger style and see what worked. I instead found a typeface that met my requirements, Cocaine Sans.

I copied Meinhof's descriptions to form this. The text is tightly packed together with no spaces between words and very little empty space overall, adding to the overwhelming claustrophobia and intentionally poor legibility. It spirals down into the centre of the page, signalling a feeling of descent, feeling increasingly small, lost, and hopeless, and a literal downward spiral. The monochrome colour scheme adds to the stark nature and is in keeping with the majority of my FMP work so far. I was initially happy with how it turned out and didn't feel the need to expand on the simple visual given that it was already largely conceptual. However, I then had the idea to combine it with an element of my Division piece.

I took the element of the photo of Meinhof's body, altered the colours, and added that to the Isolation Wing work. I thus had to abandon the monochrome aspect, and red seemed easily the most fitting. I had used it before in the 'it's just an idea' screenprinted RAF posters, and it held the same significance. It's associated with leftism/socialism, often signifies aggression and violence, features in all German flags, and doesn't clash with the existing colour scheme.

Having that photo used here made the piece more visually interesting and added a lot of significance. It is suffocated and obscured by the words, just as Meinhof was by the experiences those words describe. It is a reminder of her lowest moments, and the fact that she never got over this, never escaped. It shows how this downward spiral continued until it claimed her life, making the grungy bitter tone easily justified. Overall, I like how the final version turned out. The idea of the overwhelming text covering the entire image is something I could easily incorporate into my final video.