From fantasy to reality, often, I would find a way to mix both. From specific situations, being by myself, music in the ears, ideally somewhere in the evening when the daylight gives way to the darkness of the night. The warm orange atmosphere from inside the apartments is softly visible, and glow from the lampposts reflects on the wet paved streets. The crowd has gone; I allow myself to fully smile from situations created in my mind, laugh even, dance a little on the music only I can hear, maybe cry. What is left is my environment and I. How come the night makes us feel uninhibited? Or is it to be by ourselves?
Yet, at what moment of the day then do we allow ourselves to let go of our emotions in this pure way? Maybe you have sometimes experienced releasing an emotion in restrooms at school, work, or at a bar that you carefully held together in front of others? I do remember the day I arrived in my new high school in that new city; when the alarm rang I decided to spend the break time in the restroom. There, I felt safe, away from the awkwardness of being alone around all these people. Public restrooms have this interesting clash between the outside crowd, a social behavior to adopt, and the quiet privacy of the room. Several times a day, we confine ourselves from the rest of the world in this all sterile bleached space. Besides from the fact that our visit to the restrooms covers a physiological need, I like to think that these minutes thereby ourselves within these four narrow walls are more precious than we think. In my ideal world, restrooms are the dreamy break from our routine.
What makes us Human are our emotions. From excitement to frustration passing by envy, we are constantly living through an emotion. Yet, we forget to take the time to recognize and understand our emotions. I believe that the strongest emotions come from the boldest situations, including our dreams or fantasies. However, bold fantasy is undermined by efficiency obsession. We are used to efficiency in public spaces - white for hygiene, narrow space for stacking more, the tiled floor for quick cleaning, toilet paper at arm height for least effort- and consequently less inclined to ‘fantastic’ spaces. Because restrooms are what is going to make us remember the place, the print of it will be much stronger than the usual ‘efficient’ space. Spontaneity will come from there, as an invitation of letting go -no bad pun intended- in a desire to learn to take the time and focus on one thing after another.
The project is about one emotion, a restroom. Within an adaptable space of 12 emotions/ restrooms, 3 of them are elaborated around the following emotions: Love, Pride, Awe. From there, the idea is to research and combine elements to trigger the specific feeling inside of you. While Pride leads you up towards a golden light aura, Love makes you feel safe and calm through its soft and bumpy pink walls, only curves allowed where all sounds are muffled. Meanwhile, Awe immediately decreases your heartbeat with the dance of light shapes slowly moving, you quietly look up, mouth open of admiration on a squatting toilet. As an image of vulnerability in front of a world of unexplained yet silent contemplation.
Everything is about taking the time, making our visit to the toilet way more than a mechanical action, it becomes a ‘tilt’ that, once out, makes us envision our environment different, with less judgment and more care, spontaneity.
