Menno Aden, Artist from Berlin
structures, cartographic photography, topography
Room Portraits
Interiors of real living and working spaces from an unusual perspective. It seems as if someone has lifted the ceiling and replaced it with a scanner. In fact, the photographs consist of up to a hundred individual shots taken with a remote control and then digitally assembled.
One associates doll's houses and at the same time thinks of surveillance. Aden systematically plays through the notion of surveillance to show the voyeuristic trend that is increasingly becoming mainstream in today's surveillance capitalism.
Ceilings of the former U.S. Headquarter offices in Berlin-Dahlem. Aden captured a moment of this orphaned building's turbulent history during the Cold War – the time of transition up to its current reconstruction. Preserved by photography, this moment is carried into the present. Here are the observations of a pathfinder who scans the building for material remains of its now faded, historically significant function.