KANTUTA QUIROS & ALIOCHA IMHOff - Overlapping Biennial

“Untitled”, 2005 (the former Stasi building, Berlin) registers
a social order founded on power and control of the individual.
The setting of the room upholds a symbolic dimension,
able to enhance the visual effect of a repressive system;
it nourishes the idea of a mechanistic conception of work
processes, and favors, at the same time, role and hierarchy
establishment.
At the centre of Carla Åhlander’s interest, the totalitarian
system is dealt with from an outside view. She examines
the properties of spaces which, within power structures,
become effective control and discipline instances; moreover,
she radiographs rooms that, undoubtedly, not everybody can
associate with personal experiences, apparently not worthy
to be photographed. Transferring these images in the public
space, in an advertisement layout, Ahlander’s works emphasise
all the more the numerous mechanisms lying behind
authoritarian constellations.
Despite the total absence of individuals in these images, the
objects in the rooms set up, however, a variety of placeholders
connected by a specific purpose, helping the individual
find his predefined social role.
Nikola Dietrich, 2005
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