A Journey Round
My Room


The Berlage Theory Master Class
led by Bêka & Lemoine

April 12–23, 2021


Each spring the Berlage organizes a two-week theory master class led by a renowned architectural thinker. This year’s iteration, led by Bêka & Lemoine in collaboration with Lucas Bacle, explored the unprecedented proximity and familiarity we have with our daily domestic environments in the wake of the past year’s successive lockdowns. Revisiting Xavier de Maistre’s eccentric 1794 novel A Journey Round My Room, one of the first literary works about confinement, participants were encouraged to explore and reconquest astonishment and surprise in the way we look at our immediate surroundings. They investigated film as way to bring to experience, understanding, and narration of domestic  space that other kinds of representational media—such as plans, sections, elevations, or photographs—cannot. The master class concluded with a film festival featuring ten five-minutes films, each manifesting a highly personal, sharp, and critical interpretation of each participant’s relationship to domestic space.


Contributions by

Juan Benavides
Salomon Frausto
Ludo Groen

www.theberlage.nl
@theberlage


(In)Habit

Ryan Ridge Rahardja (ID)
Through his preparation prior a date, we discover the way in which Ryan’s daily routines shape his domestic space.

Cast: Ryan Ridge and Jacklyn Mickey
Length: 3:06 min

Wrapping a Room

Ana Herreros Cantis (ES)
Ana lives surrounded by her landlord's objects. As time passes by, she learns to coexist in this unfamiliar domestic space.

Length: 3:04 min

The Case of Masha & Vania

Maria Finagina (RU)
A strange scientific experiment on body and space takes place in a bedroom.

Cast: Maria Finagina and Ivan Potapenko
Voice over: Michael Tjia
Length: 4:56 min

Outside In

Maria Christopoulou (GR)
When she moved to the Netherlands, Maria was surprised by the invasion of privacy through her windows.

Length: 4:56 min

Back in Space

Nishi Shah (IN)
Nishi embarks on a quest to find the one monument that embodies her current soujorn, another place to add to her postcard collection.

Length: 4:03 min

A five-minute intermission: The Story of the Boiled Egg

Misaligned

Jacklyn Mickey (US)
Jacklyn has a pathological eye condition. For the first time, she will let them move to where they want to see, even if it means to be separated from each other.

Cast: Jacklyn Mickey, Nishi Shah, and Heng Yu
Length: 3:51 min

Living in a Sandcastle

Heng Yu (TW)
As if his current room was a spatial palimpsest of his life, Heng’s objects and fragments recall the previous rooms he has lived in.

Length: 4:42 min

I Live with Michael

Michael Tjia (NL)
What would Michael's objects say about his way of living and occupying space?

Length: 4:20 min

Beyond the Walls

Georgia Katsi (GR)
Georgia lives in an attic. By listening carefully to the surrounding sounds, she wonders about what lies beyond her walls.

Length: 4:10 min

Choir Lessons

Jin Young (US)
This is the moment of catharsis when Jin decides to leave his apartment, housed inside an incredible—yet peculiar—location.

Cast: Jin Young Chang, Rory Hooper, Heng Yu, Ege Sener, Georgios Kleisiaris, Steven LinKrishna, Ajithkumar Pilai, Sofie-Amalia Diderikson, Pedro Vasquez, Ryan Ridge Rahardja, Nishi Shah, Maria Finagina, Jacklyn Mickey, Georgia Katsi-Stamatoukou, Juan Benavides, Lucas Bacle
Length: 3:06 min
Mark

A Journey Round
My Room

The Berlage Theory Master Class
led by Bêka & Lemoine

in collaboration with Lucas Bacle
April 12–23, 2021

Each spring the Berlage organizes a two-week theory master class led by a renowned architectural thinker. This year’s iteration, led by Bêka & Lemoine in collaboration with Lucas Bacle, explored the unprecedented proximity and familiarity we have with our daily domestic environments in the wake of the past year’s successive lockdowns. Revisiting Xavier de Maistre’s eccentric 1794 novel A Journey Round My Room, one of the first literary works about confinement, participants were encouraged to explore and reconquest astonishment and surprise in the way we look at our immediate surroundings. They investigated film as way to bring to experience, understanding, and narration of domestic  space that other kinds of representational media—such as plans, sections, elevations, or photographs—cannot. The master class concluded with a film festival featuring ten five-minutes films, each manifesting a highly personal, sharp, and critical interpretation of each participant’s relationship to domestic space.

Contributions by

Juan Benavides
Salomon Frausto
Ludo Groen
Mark

4. Loren Eiseley





LE / 1957
From The Immense Journey
            A billion years have gone into the making of that eye; the water and the salt and the vapors of the sun have built it; things that squirmed in the tide silts have devised it. Light-year beyond light-year, deep beyond deep, the mind may rove by means of it, hanging above the bottomless and surveying impartially the state of matter in the white-dwarf suns.




Yet whenever I see a frog’s eye low in the water warily ogling the shoreward landscape, I always think inconsequentially of those twiddling mechanical eyes that mankind manipulates nightly from a thousand observatories. Someday, with a telescopic lens an acre in extent, we are going to see something not to out liking, some looming shape outside there across the great pond of space.
            Whenever I catch a frog’s eye I am aware of this, but I do not find it depressing. I stand quite still and try hard not to move or lift a hand since it would only frighten him. And standing thus it finally comes to me that this is the most enormous extension of vision of which life is capable: the projection of itself into other lives. This is the lonely magnificent power of humanity. It is, far more than any spatial adventure, the supreme epitome of the reaching out.
Mark

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