The State of Mind is based on an exchange between the STASI Museum Leipzig and Daniel Knorr. The exchange divides the work in two parts. The museum and the artist exchanged exhibits. One part of the work is in the Museum in Leipzig (former STASI Headquarters) consisting of a scalemodel of the soviet tank T-34 installed on a pedestal. Some documents are hanging at the gun of the model tank. The content of the papers are a flyer written by two schoolgirls in 1968 warning the citizens in Frankfurt-Oder (former GDR) about the soviet and east block tank invasion in Prague in order to stop the famous “Prague Spring” demonstration and case files of STASI, containing the observation and interrogation of the “offenders”.

The second part of the presentation, which is shown in this exhibition, are the file-stones, which consist of former confidential documents issued by the secret police STASI in order to control the population which were destroyed by the system itself when dissolved in 1989. We see the result of the feared Secret Police’s frantic attempt to erase all traces (save for the odd letter) of their institutionalized political paranoia.