CONTROL (&) DISORDER
I have photographed simulators and training facilities designed to help prevent and rehearse exceptional crisis situations. In my series Control (&) Disorder I investigate themes of anticipation and safety perfectionism by looking at Finnish training facilities used in the fields of law enforcement, aviation, seafaring, rescue services, health care and national defence. I have not intervened in the spaces or details but instead captured them in all their natural, uncanny oddness.
What if?
Individuals and communities seek order and control in their own environments. We prepare ourselves for potential threats by simulating them: We anticipate the future and practise situations in which order is lost and the ”normal” level of security broken. We thus inflate our fears from mere imagination to semi-real physical spaces and events.
Our ability to learn, predict and imagine has elevated our species to the peak of evolution, at least in our own opinion. Simulators, however, force us to consider to what degree the future can be predicted and controlled. They embody the question: what if everything goes wrong? Simultaneously, they expose an ideal of a world in which everything, even chaos, has order.
In addition to catastrophe anticipation, we plan the future on a far more personal and everyday level. Control (&) Disorder includes a parallel theme based on an observation of my own need to be in control; a delusion of being able to dictate upcoming events with the help of imagination. If one assumes it is possible to manage the future, surprising situations become unnatural and frightening. The effort to control ends up creating anxiety.