Developed from her first 'collaboration' she reappropriated and gifted ray-guns for Claes Oldenburg that featured in his Whitney Museum exhibition at the same time as P.S.1 - he credited by name the friends who had helped him collect them, but referred to HW and 'Group W.' Project was undertaken as a frontal assault on a man who had exploited her.
Title' So Help Me Hannah' is an old-fashioned locution - a play on the phrase 'So Help Me God', tone of an affectionate complaint.
in 1978 Mrs. Butter (HW mother) found out her cancer had returned, HW looked after her. Sense of vulnerability/themes of life and death.
The performances were presented 5 times between 1979-1985 and were approx half an hour long.
At the conclusion, she lies on the floor defeated with the gun at her hip. The interplay between Wilke and cameraman became an existential game, symbolically as well as in reality between life and death.