phil III dachboden / attic

research

questions

• what is your relationship towards a specific piece of furniture or interior (something you love, something you don’t like, something you find useless…)?
• is your wardrobe a tool for order or is it hiding chaos?
• where is intimacy located? what is an intimate space?
• what are our clothes hiding?
• can we share everything without words?

quotes

[by Gaston Bachelard]

even when we no longer have a garret, when the attic room is lost and gone, there remains the fact that we once loved a garret, once lived in an attic. We return to them in our night dreams. These retreats have the value of a shell. 

Bachelard, Pg. 10.

In the past, the attic may have seemed too small, it may have seemed cold in winter and hot in summer. Now, however, in memory recaptured through daydreams, it is hard to say through what syn­cretism the attic is at once small and large, warm and cool, always comforting. Bachelard, Pg. 10.

Wardrobes with their shelves, desks with their drawers, and chests with their false bottoms are veritable organs of the secret psychological life. Indeed, without these „objects“ and a few others in equally high favor, our intimate life would lack a model of intimacy. They are hybrid objects, subject objects. Like us, through us and for us, they have a quality of intimacy. Bachelard, Pg. 78.

„jemanden in eine Schublade stecken“

„We shall never reach the bottom of the casket.“ The infinite quality of the intimate dimension could not be better expressed. Sometimes, a lovingly fashioned casket has interior per­ spectives that change constantly as a result of daydream. We open it and discover that it is a dwelling-place, that a house is hidden in it. Bachelard, Pg. 86. 

In reality, however, the poet has given concrete form to a very general psychological theme, namely, that there will always be more things in a closed, than in an open, box. To verify images kills them, and it is always more enriching to imagine than to experience. Bachelard, Pg. 86.

„avere un sogno nel cassetto“

The action of the secret passes continually from the hider of things to the hider of self. A casket is a dungeon for objects. And here is a dreamer who feels that he shares the dungeon of its secret. We should like to open it, and we should also like to open our hearts. Bachelard, Pg. 88.

material

pic: Andrej Ivančić

literature

Bachelard Gaston: „Drawers, Chests and Wardrobes” in: Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (La Poétique de l’éspace), 1958.

Weinberger Lois, Debris Field : Erkundungen im Abgelebten.  2010–2016, documenta 14, 2017.