Site-specific Installation in Vitrine
Miniature, various medium,
size 4×1 meter Kaltenböck window shop, Krems
Video Essay
5 mins duration
2022

The Kaltenböck corner invokes a sense of watching a movie with the lights on, as the illusion of the vitrine space conflicts with the awareness of reality. The objects inside the vitrine seem timeless, like the antique figurines across the street with their empty gazes. This project aims to reveal the contradictory meanings of private life through situations presented within the vitrine space. Adorno’s Minima Moralia describes modern homes as depersonalized containers that fail to accommodate human proportions and maximize profit. This leads to an obsession with home decoration as a shield against the reality of the impossibility of being at home in modern times. The decoration acts as a superficial marking that individualizes homes, but fails to address the human shortcomings that are reflected in each interior. Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space provides a reflection of “Angst” or mental experiences within intimate spaces. The project explores the unconscious architecture of interior and home décor to create a space that suspends time and invokes memories. The objects chosen for the vitrine space are found miniatures that cast a metaphorical situation, igniting a dramatic situation that reflects the precarity of human existence within private spaces.