How to Be Young in an Old Space(2017–2020) is a "self-anthropological study" that began with a personal curiosity about the meaning of the term "home."
The project took place in the space where I lived, which I should have called home, but in reality, it was a place where I stored myself. It was a space that should have been mine but did not belong to me. I couldn't make changes to it, or at least not significant ones. It was a space where people came, stayed for a while, and then left.
The dynamics of the space were shaped by friends and their belongings, as they needed a place to live temporarily. An involuntary exchange of objects took place between the existing belongings and those brought by newcomers. When people moved out, some of their objects were left behind. I called them "zero-type objects." These objects did not belong to me, yet I could not throw them away, so they gradually became part of the landscape.
The project proposes an unstaged visual documentation, developed over three years, of a young person from the Romanian provinces living in an apartment filled with heavy, old-fashioned furniture in the center of Bucharest, and of the way she relates to this space.
Point-and-shoot photographs on 35 mm film capture moments from the life of the space, transforming something ephemeral into something physical, yet still fragile. Like memories, they reproduce a reality that is distorted in comparison to the moment as it was lived.
The video shows the connection between the person living in this space and the guests, invited to stay for a while, meeting each morning at the most intimate point of the room: the bed.
The book is a collection of photographs and texts in the form of diary entries, printed on fragile, transparent paper that is almost ephemeral, much like the memories it preserves. Arranged inside a specially created object resembling a box, the sheets are left unbound to allow space for future additions, just like the contents of a drawer.
HD video, 3’16’’ → Watch video
Exhibition view "How to be young in an old space" curated by Raluca Milescu at A5, Bucharest, Romania 2020