Late at night I sit upright in my bed. More precisely, I sit late into the night deciding on the route of a journey that I might follow in a house that I did not exit for weeks. I choose not to wait for sunrise and find myself on the move again – I dream the house. The new house moves. Its narrative is rooted in a sequence of spaces. I see its design as a spatial montage.
I traverse the architectural set, wandering from one place to another. The bathroom door leads to a lonely bar in the long grass of a flat landscape. To my left I trace wispy clouds and a shallow but promising valley. Up the stairs past the bedroom I step out onto a friend’s balcony in Antwerp with half a jug of beer in my hand. I am about to fall through the floor and then, suddenly, I eat pineapple upside-down cake early in the morning, on the cusp of Spring. While I hastily devour my breakfast in some faraway country, I figure I might as well go to the living room. There is a neighbourhood gathering at 11 a.m. for pie and socialising in a dead-end street. However, the shadows on the floor cast by a street lantern outside, rudely interrupt my walk to the living room door. As I briefly turn my head towards the library, I overlook a small parade celebrating the opening of a restaurant with a ribbon cutting – things around me soon regain their vibrancy. In the chilly dawn a path guides me to a back garden where a group of twelve men, all in suits, play bingo. I spend the evening marking off numbers and talking with a blonde Irishman.
I make my way through the empty hallway and out the front door, yet I turn to look back at my house. I come to see my most cherished images projected on the wooden facade. The exterior world, suspended between experience, memory and imagination, is transformed into an interior landscape of desire: a café and a mountain appear. The contours of my house stagger. I turn my camera on the house, shoot the scene and simply name it “My New Home”.
Since the start of the pandemic – and for some weeks now – I am exploring the narrative of the house, the script, the plot. I re-enter the house and wonder about walking on one side of the entrance or down the middle – I am left with many choices. As I pace some unfamiliar path, the imagined geography develops further… shot by shot, step by step. Alone I continue to spend the night in a bubble of psychospatial journeys, simulated travel. The practice of imagining and mobilizing my home is becoming a soothing habit.
Moving between the open doorways of kitchen and dining room, I try to find ways of relating to new times, my restricted environment. A new way of navigating emerges – has to emerge. I am trying to move beyond barriers toward a new form of domesticity. I dream of a space that intrinsically relates voyage and home, a narrative space to move freely within. Everyday I inevitably ask how – between the walls of my house – a world comes to be, how it's built over time and how it's kept alive through a sequence of spaces and images.
I end up in the basement, after following a signpost, and find myself between roofless walls. As I stroll a bit further, the walls become a stadium, enclosing me. An impatient crowd gathers closely together and finally around me. This is tonight’s story that is developed within the house’s design. I am at the end of my journey and finally return to my bedroom. Wide awake and satisfied I say to myself; I cannot travel far, but I don’t have to either. From now on, I travel domestic. The new house … moves, after all.
Images and text : Jozefien Van der Aelst / Writer & Filmmaker
http://jozefienvanderaelst.com/