A series of short videos, interactive DVD, 2004-2005
After an absence of six years from my native town, I started to realise how much my neighbourhood, Ploiesti Vest, also called “in the West”, had changed. For a longer period of time I transformed my balcony into an observation point and started to film my neighbours from the block of flats in front of my own, as they were occupying a large part of my horizon.
In my childhood we used to call these balconies “courtyards” or “gardens”, they were like suspended gardens. Everyone was spending time in their balconies, watching their neighbours, talking to each other between different floors or across, we were together while still separated. Each balcony had the character and imprint of their owner, I used to see them as a multitude of universes/worlds, each of the short films I recorded represents a portrait of the respective neighbour.
In 2020, during the lockdown caused by the pandemic, many people started to use their balconies in order to communicate to the outside world, in Italy they were singing, in Russia they were dancing, in Germany they were exhibiting art. Thus, this small architectural appendix to our apartments proves it still has potential as a space on the margin between private and public, between individual and collective.
