When No One Is Watching

You might have of secrets hid­den that you keep in cus­tody as the most pre­cious thing in the world. Maybe you love kitschy sou­venirs that you bought in all the places you vis­it­ed and you don’t want to reveal to your guests. Instead you want to show off with your cul­ture and the exquis­ite taste you have! Pri­va­cy has infini­tive shades of under­stand­ing. Let’s take Odyssey as a leit­mo­tif of Euro­pean tra­di­tion and try to define the top­ic. Ulysses lost him­self for the sake of under­stand­ing the bor­ders of his own pri­vate moment and Pene­lope waved sys­tem­at­ic pat­terns of her desire of liv­ing the cou­ple, that was repeat­ed to infin­i­ty. Every morn­ing the tex­ture would be repeat­ed like a mantra. From these two points of view we are arriv­ing at the per­cep­tion that is in the begin­ning of a dra­ma, staged in our home. Pri­vate tends to be some­thing inher­ent­ly spe­cial or sen­si­tive. It seems that inti­ma­cy is rarely shared with fam­i­ly, but cel­e­brat­ed with your part­ner as a joy of life. The domain of pri­va­cy, from this point of view, can over­lap with secu­ri­ty, which includes the con­cept of devot­ed con­fi­dence. In this pri­vate sphere you feel secure. Integri­ty gives your own world a defense from unsanc­tioned inva­sion of pri­va­cy nor­mal­ly always pro­mot­ed by cor­po­ra­tions and we hope by few­er gov­ern­ments, since con­sti­tu­tions claim law on this sub­ject. Rev­o­lu­tions and social deter­mi­na­tion orga­nized the con­scious­ness of ones own pri­vate under­stand­ing as a civ­il right. But does it real­ly exist?

FASHION AS AN EXTENDED PERSONALITY

The last time I felt real­ly pri­vate was before birth, so I can­not remem­ber what real pri­va­cy can do. I took advan­tage of my pas­sion which is applied art and devel­oped not only a tool of sur­vival, but I under­stood that my own inte­ri­or has two lay­ers. One is myself as a human body that needs to get dressed and hid­ing cer­tain parts of my body is a form of pri­va­cy, that finds an expres­sion in the joy of fash­ion. Myself, seen as a walk­ing instal­la­tion moves in that sphere that we call home. From the way one dress­es to the way one fur­nish­es his house it is not far. If you have char­ac­ter and you know what you want, it is an advan­tage, but you can always get inspired by styl­ists and inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tors. Even the less inter­est­ed per­son will leave some traces of his own ego, which can be seen as some­thing pri­vate in the space as time pass­es by. It is fas­ci­nat­ing to work on a project try­ing to express the under­stand­ing of pri­va­cy of anoth­er per­son. You have to know and learn more, in order to do some psy­chother­a­peu­tic work as a base. Your home is your soul and you have to work on it. Noth­ing hap­pens with­out pre­cise exer­cise and work outs. Your mind is as your body and to keep it in shape you need some chal­lenges. The best place to scan your psy­chol­o­gy is that sce­nario that you don’t nec­es­sary want to share with whoever.

METAPHOR FOR IDENTITY

Accord­ing to Wal­ter Ben­jamin — epic chron­i­cler of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Paris — the domes­tic inte­ri­or was ‘the uni­verse for pri­vate cit­i­zen’, a metaphor for bour­geois iden­ti­ty. Visu­al­iza­tion of inte­ri­or­i­ty as the liv­ing spaces became dis­tin­guished for the first time from the space of work. After a long peri­od only the pow­er­ful were able to occu­py spaces for their pri­vate as well as pub­lic pur­pos­es and every­thing began to change. Through art his­to­ry we can fol­low this devel­op­ment and from rep­re­sen­ta­tive por­traits of sta­tus we start­ed to dis­cov­er our inte­ri­or life, fam­i­ly and rela­tions. Peo­ple began to be rep­re­sent­ed by their sur­round­ings and a very long and detailed inter­pre­ta­tion of their inter­ac­tions were placed in their homes. These things are so inti­mate­ly iden­ti­fied with the bour­geois home-dweller that the break­age of any house­hold fur­nish­ing could occa­sion high­ly the­atri­cal Tantrums, the reac­tion of some­one who felt the trace of his earth­ly days being obscured. When you deal with inte­ri­ors active­ly you are a voyeur and you love to sneak in the oth­ers pri­vate spheres. And there is noth­ing bet­ter than art to get inspired. Benjamin’s visions and analy­sis on sur­re­al­is­tic strate­gies of blur­ring of the bound­aries between the house and its inhab­i­tant, makes very pre­cise edicts on the mid-cen­tu­ry mod­ernist who coun­tered ratio­nal­is­tic faith in rea­son and tech­nol­o­gy with their vision of the uncan­ny. Unheim­lich in Ger­man, lit­er­al­ly, the unhomey. The sur­re­al­ist vision of the house made by uncan­ny super­abun­dance of con­no­ta­tions con­trasts sharply with what Ben­jamin iden­ti­fies as the ethos of mod­ernist design. “Glass is such a hard and flat mate­r­i­al that noth­ing set­tles on it … It is above all the ene­my of secrets. It is the ene­my of pos­ses­sions.” Here we are fac­ing one of the most stim­u­lat­ing con­tra­dic­tions mod­ernism and sur­re­al­ism, as well as glass being a tool of expres­sion for mak­ing you feel spe­cial, pri­vate and unique.

HOME AS A TEMPLE

Defin­ing us as a pri­ma­ry pri­vate enti­ty and the envi­ron­ment we live in as pri­vate sphere, we have to focus on some­thing that iden­ti­fies the excite­ment of our exis­tence. Light is fun­da­men­tal at home, since the archi­tec­ture wants to lim­it or expand the use of it. We can use light as nat­ur­al or arti­fi­cial and the game of shad­ows and reflec­tions can be a very impor­tant tool for cre­at­ing atmos­phere. We need shad­ows for inti­ma­cy and thoughts, but when we emerge from dark­ness we look more beau­ti­ful. In the North you want as much sun­light as pos­si­ble to invade your house, while in the South you try to hide from too much expo­sure to light. This is one of the keys for open­ing some­thing that is a very impor­tant trea­sure: your own feel­ings about domes­tic­i­ty. This moment, when you open your­self to abun­dance and ful­fill­ment is when the light is falls on that some­thing that you want to cel­e­brate. Your home, your pri­vate space is the last tem­ple left to live alone, with fam­i­ly, part­ners, ani­mals the beau­ty of your memories.

Ilse Craw­ford writes in her bible of inte­ri­ors: “Light was the first thing God cre­at­ed, accord­ing the Old Tes­ta­ment, but it tends to be the last thing peo­ple think about when it comes to their homes. Light is prob­a­bly the sin­gle most impor­tant con­cept to address when it comes to mak­ing a home that feels right, and light will make the fastest and most dra­mat­ic dif­fer­ence. If you want a stim­u­lat­ing envi­ron­ment, you need vari­a­tions, tex­ture, and shad­ows.” She is defines in her very pre­cise way, how to work around that sto­ry that should be your pri­vate sphere.

ENERGIZING THE LIGHT

Glass is a tool for mul­ti­ply­ing and ener­giz­ing light. Bril­liant clear glass table­ware brings life to your table. Glass can look sol­id or liq­uid, cer­tain­ly it seems to float, it is an imma­te­r­i­al mate­r­i­al. Crys­tal is even stronger and the lucent pow­er of the Bohemi­an crys­tal is renowned for its spe­cial pow­er, trans­mit­ting a very deep sen­ti­ment that can give an almost reli­gious sat­is­fac­tion. The game of shad­ows is very impor­tant and their tran­si­to­ry move­ments are poet­ry to your domes­tic­i­ty. I adore the mix­ture of nat­ur­al and arti­fi­cial light, fus­ing with the shad­ows to a fre­net­ic dance of stim­u­lus. The cycle of light, espe­cial­ly in win­ter, needs an impor­tant com­po­nent: can­dle light and fire­place. Every time you real­ize that you are star­ing at a fire instead of your TV you saved a slice of your soul. Social­iz­ing with fire has always been so important.

REFLECTIONS ON NEW PERSPECTIVES

Mir­rors reflect the scope of your inte­ri­or in dif­fer­ent sens­es. Your own inte­ri­or soul as well as your home reflects on a very impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion: real­iz­ing is the first step of under­stand­ing how to do it bet­ter. In the rur­al past mir­rors were seen in a neg­a­tive con­text. First of all, after work­ing hard in the fields it was bet­ter not to look at one­self and then you might be afraid that the mir­ror was bewitched. Dur­ing the Enlight­en­ment, mir­rors began to be con­sid­ered as fun­da­men­tal tools for open­ing new per­spec­tives, reflect­ing light and pro­vid­ing sur­pris­es. Objects of all kinds are not only func­tion­al, but the sym­bol­ic val­ues fuse with the orga­nized ones. The more that objects show their souls, the more the rela­tion becomes impar­tial and coor­di­nates the game you want to play. This sym­bol­ic pow­er has a meta­physic dimen­sion that nur­tures our desire and gaze.

TRANSCENDENCE TOOL

The stained-glass win­dows in chapels, cathe­drals and com­mon church­es are the expres­sion of this impor­tant aspect, where we seduce nat­ur­al light into our souls. The fil­ters are col­ored glass pieces that play the melodies of sat­is­fac­tions like an accor­dian. In Saint Peter’s Cathe­dral in Rome we remem­ber Bernini’s Holy Spir­it above the alter that is the syn­the­sis of all the celes­tial val­ues. And when we cel­e­brate our own acknowl­edge­ment to God, we can feel the pow­er of the sim­ple alche­my of glass and light that is ele­vates us into our inte­ri­or­i­ty. If you care to, you can call it pri­va­cy, since there is no exam in the world that allows judg­ing that some­thing inside you that gets hit by that ray­on of light in that exact moment of indul­gence. Reli­gion should be some­thing very pri­vate that you don’t need to share with every­one, since your under­stand­ing is so per­son­al and can­not be trans­lat­ed. But not only the spir­i­tu­al ele­va­tion needs these tools of expres­sion. Very often this tech­nique was used for rep­re­sen­ta­tive halls that are expressed very mun­dane stimuli.

HUMAN GRANDIOSITY

At the archi­tec­tur­al Bien­nale in Venice in 2014, some 100 nev­er-before-exhib­it­ed draw­ings by Daniel Libe­skind, cre­at­ed by hand from pen and sepia-toned wash­es of cof­fee, were screen print­ed by Lasvit, using a ceram­ic process. A curved, lumi­nous wall of light and trans­paren­cy was cre­at­ed to per­form ambigu­ous forms that alter­nate­ly evoked fave­las, futur­is­tic cities, mechan­i­cal parts, and even parts of human bod­ies. Through the lay­er­ing of glass and light, a land­scape was cre­at­ed with the inten­si­ty of stained-glass but an absolute­ly dif­fer­ent tech­nol­o­gy. As the title “Son­nets of Baby­lon” it evoked a sense of grandios­i­ty of human exis­tence, reflect­ing the pro­found dis­as­ter of dis­so­lu­tion, pun­ish­ment and judge­ment. As Libe­skind con­clud­ed the search for unex­pect­ed coin­ci­dences of the images with space to cre­ate an unex­pect­ed phe­nom­e­non of not mere­ly metaphor­i­cal exer­cise, but a poet­ic equiv­a­lent of the images you select­ed for the bur­den of mem­o­ries that has nev­er be forgotten.

BEWARE OF YOURSELF

The vul­gar­iza­tion of mag­i­cal rit­u­al objects opens a very impor­tant chap­ter in the dis­cus­sion of pri­va­cy. Not every­body is capa­ble to car­ry the spir­i­tu­al bur­den of under­stand­ing some­thing called the truth, or bet­ter we could just lim­it our­selves to a prop­er sense of jus­tice. Once the con­fes­sion was a cheap­er ver­sion of psy­cho­analy­sis and an easy prob­lem solver. It checked every pri­vate sphere from lent to lent, dic­tat­ed by fast­ing so that your soul and body could become cleansed for the next indul­gence. Every­thing was orga­nized and you could pre­pare your strat­e­gy in advance. Mar­riages, funer­als, vernissages, fairs, bap­tisms and open­ings are all rit­u­als that demand the open­ing of your pri­va­cy in order to allow the pub­lic inter­ac­tion. The mem­o­ries of these moments become part of your pri­vate sto­ry and life, but nowa­days we want to be shown through Insta­gram or oth­er social media. With the rise of the inter­net pri­va­cy began to suf­fer and polar­iza­tion and harass­ment caused symp­toms of self-destruc­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in young peo­ple. Each age has its of peri­od of inte­ri­or rev­o­lu­tion and each epoch is signed by it’s self-con­sum­ing agony of def­i­n­i­tion of some­thing we always try to sell. Self­ie cul­ture, promi­nence, and loca­tion tech­nol­o­gy are a crime against your pri­vate sphere. The use of adver­tise­ments and their track­ing meth­ods also pose threats to dig­i­tal pri­va­cy. If we were scarred by a mon­strous sce­nario not more then thir­ty years ago, today’s real­i­ty is much worse than imag­i­na­tion could have foretold.

Every­thing changed, but in real­i­ty, it has always been the same. The rea­son we have to be con­scious and to cel­e­brate our pri­vate sphere is giv­en by under­stand­ing the truth. As long as there is the will to find the sub­li­ma­tion of this through shin­ing light on those forces, that you can cre­ate your own pri­vate atmosphere.

 

 

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Stephan Hamel is an inter­na­tion­al design con­sul­tant with thir­ty years expe­ri­ence of the indus­try work­ing with fur­ni­ture and inte­ri­or brands. He is a inter­na­tion­al sales and com­mu­ni­ca­tion direc­tor, using his under­stand­ing of cul­tur­al shifts, and what makes the indus­try tick. Core mem­ber of Lasvit fam­i­ly since 2011, Hamel is renowned for his abil­i­ty to cre­ate expe­ri­ence and con­nect the right design­ers and brands to move togeth­er into the limelight.