May 2016 at At Home, Home Live Art, Angel House, Brighton Festival

“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in” Virginia Woolf

This is our home, our burrow, our place, our own square meter of brick and mold and earth – and we are going to make sure our door remains locked and ‘safe’. Aren’t you the outsider, stranger, invader, the animus monster from the closet of all legends and tales?

Europe’s Living a Celebration is a multimedia fable, a kinetic sculpture about belonging, safety, paranoia and ‘preventive violence’ that you can look at, but not touch.

A person can be heard calling and felt knocking from the inside of a locked door. Viewers and passers-by can look through a spy-hole on the door to discover this person’s identity and whereabouts: somehow next to you, somehow fictional, somehow miles away.

Through the peephole is the inaccesible image of a place that contrasts with your dirty, unholy immediate surroundings. We become the creatures outside, the monsters from below, unknown, feared, locked out.

A video screen on the backside of the spy-hole, basic loudspeakers and a synchronized homemade ‘mechanical knocker’ create an illusion of insurmountable physical proximity and impossible intimacy between the persons on each side of the door.

The collaborative effort involved Clara García Fraile, Sam Pearson, performer Simon Malone, and me, with cinematography by Guido Wiaggio.

Photos by Lidia de Pedro