Poetics of Space - Lydia See
“We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.”
In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard’s assertion of what “home” is supposes that all have a safe space in which they feel protected - which is just not a reality for many people, regardless of a pandemic. Home is a state of being as well as a place - a psychological liminality which relies on a multitude of forces. His assumption that memories of the “outside world” are substantively different than those of the “interior” may be true, but “home” is certainly not as binary as “outside” and “inside.” Acknowledging the systemic inequities which have been continuously maintaining a culture of white supremacy thrust into the forefront of more widespread awareness due to COVID-19 is one part of the necessity of naming and imagining what safety looks like for all. Consider what “home” (and “social distancing”) might mean for+ someone experiencing homelessness? What public space looks like? How we navigate space together? And how we can enable and support safe spaces for everyone - those who are without homes, those who are between countries, those who are “essential,” those who are incarcerated?
In much of his writing in The Poetics of Space, Bachelard urges a consideration of space which relies on close examination of one’s immediate domestic surroundings - the inside of a drawer, the objects placed just so, the personal, the intimate, a poetic phenomenological universe. Yet - to step outside of this cloistered idea of what domestic space is and what “home” looks like for some - I wonder how the rhythm of a city feels from inside of an apartment now as compared to this time last year? Has the alteration of exterior space and time affected the interior? How quiet is it outside your window? How loud is it inside your room?
What follows is a selection of images which encourage a consideration of the poetics of space - how we occupy interior space, how others may be witnessing space, as they know it, change around them, and how our own humanity is affected by our control (and lack of control) over space - space which we perceive as ours, space which we claim, space which we are forced to share, space which is embedded in our identity.
These images are all curated from #lifeatsixfeet
“Rilke wrote: ‘These trees are magnificent, but even more magnificent is the sublime and moving space between them, as though with their growth it too increased.’”