The encounter in a Leipzig appartment between a Stasi officer and a civilian informant is the chosen setting for Zimmer, Gespräche (‘Rooms, Conversations’). The Stasi was the all-powerful East-German police until 1989. However, neither the Stasi nor the city of Leipzig are ever mentioned explicitly. 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 realist scene is not Dora García’s intention, and Rooms, Conversations is neither a documentary nor a documentary fiction. What García seeks is to use the parameters of a given historical situation in order to communicate abstract notions such as fear, control, authority, submissiveness, obedience, absurdity, power or surveillance. All notions which are closely connected to issues of secrecy, archiving, the community or the codes of human behaviour: recurring themes in the work of the Spanish artist.

2006, 31’, video, colour, sound, German spoken, English subtitles