Zimmer Gesprache

The encounter in a Leipzig apartment between a Stasi officer and a civilian informant was the chosen setting for 'Zimmer, Gespräche' ('Rooms, Conversations').

The Stasi was the all-powerful East-German political police until the fall of the Berlin wall in 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, the clothes they wear, the furniture and the architectural backdrop. Constructing a realist scene or reconstructing a historical situation was not Dora García's intention, and 'Rooms, Conversations' is neither a documentary nor a documentary fiction. What García seeked was to use the parameters of a given historical situation in order to communicate abstract notions such as fear, control, authority, dependency, obedience, absurdity, and power. All notions that were closely connected to issues of secrecy, archiving, the community, or the codes of human behaviour: recurring themes in the work of the Spanish artist.

The video was shot in the spring of 2006 in one of the most representative social housing projects of the 80s in Leipzig, the Grünau neighbourhood. The script was based on the research the artist carried out for over a year on the photo, video and audio archives of the Stasi in the Leipzig and Berlin headquarters, now managed by the BStU (http://www.bstu.bund.de).