Cats and Magpies – [In]Corporeal Architecture

Dear Guest,

Welcome to my home!

I live in an apartment. I have not known this place long enough to establish an intimate relationship to it, but it has been my home for the last two years.

It is a two-bedroom apartment with a cosy living room, and an open and spatial kitchen……but let’s not rush into the cooking area although I spend most of my time in there.

The flat is on the first floor, so I don’t have to fight gravity like some of my neighbours – a pretty good strategic move.

Once you enter, please take off your shoes. It’s a Bosnian and Norwegian custom. You may turn left and take two steps forward. Now you are facing a large bathroom with a much-too-occupying-jacuzzi to your left. However, it does come in handy some times. Turn to your right, and you will face a mirror. After gazing my self in it, I turn right and take two steps, this leads you out of the bathroom and into the corridor. Now, finding myself at the hallway, I take two steps forward into my bedroom. It’s a tiny room with a wardrobe (to your left). The desk is in front of you, and the bed is to your right. Positioned as you are, you are facing a window. While the room is tiny and uninteresting, its walls had echoed many entertaining conversations and arguments coming from the neighbours across the street – arguing with seagulls and with each other (click here to listen). Please turn 180 degrees and take two steps forward then turn right and take 4 steps through the hall. Now I welcome you into my living room. This part of the apartment I especially like as it opens up from a somewhat claustrophobic hallway. Here I usually stand and look around to ‘map the situation’. Turn to the left, and you’ll face the kitchen – a ‘stage’ where an actual ritual that has had a significant presence in my life, often finds its place. It is a ritual of my mother making “jufka”, a thinly flatted dough, emerging from a creative theatrical act – a tangible ritual resting on her fingertips. These are the very moments that have made this new and foreign place into my home.

After standing there and reminiscing the vision of my mother, I get distracted by the sounds behind me. Turn 180 degrees. While I often find visitors in the living room, I always look for my nephews, whom I usually find behind the freezer doors at your right, looking for ice cream. However, this was a pre-COVID time when life used to be louder and more accessible.

In that swirl of trumping feet, look to the left. You will find two big windows introducing a beautiful greenfield, usually staging a show of running cats and teasing magpies (click here to see the image; upload here what you see in your space). Seamingly undisrupted, the cats pretend not to be bothered by the mocking birds – a nature’s theatre at its best.

Mapping my home has shown me how entertaining my house is, being surrounded by and displaying acts of theatre staging manifestations of connections:

Manifestations of Connections

Daily rituals

entangled in the cosmic web. Seemingly like a mundane liquid smoke, it floats throughout the empty air.

On an act, it finds its resting place.

I try to remain attentive and capture

the moment which connects me to

the sphere of everything

so that I can hold on to it

as for dear life.

Now, I will leave you to observe and absorb. Feel free to stay as long as you like.

On the way out, don’t forget your shoes.