Zimmer, Gespräche

A Leipzig apartment is the chosen setting for an encounter between a Stasi officer and a civilian informant in ‘Zimmer Gespräche’ (‘Room, Conversations’). Until 1989, the Stasi was the all-powerful East-German police. However, neither the Stasi nor the city of Leipzig are ever specifically mentioned. The video is thus set in an undetermined time and space, only discernible through the accent of the actors and the clothes they wear. Constructing a realistic scene is not Dora Garcia’s intention, and ‘Zimmer Gespräche’ is neither a documentary nor a documentary fiction. Garcia is attempting to communicate abstract notions such as fear, control, authority, submissiveness, obedience, absurdity, power or surveillance by using the parameters of a given historical situation. Such notions, which are closely connected to issues of secrecy, archiving, the community or codes of human behaviour, are recurring themes in the work of this Spanish artist.