Bachelard's Steps

by Edward Tsui · Toronto, CA

To express a thought, an outdoor staircase waiting to be climbed to the roof is diametrically different from the one buried in a dungeon with little to no daylight. Yet, these two imaginaries could form a duality with a whole. From the inspired reading of The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), in which building parts are carefully examined psychologically and revered intimately. In this work, I use ‘steps’ as the subject and apply it in his manner of investigations. This work is an attempt to explore on the senses when a person is confronted with an archetype inherently imbued with antagonistic values. This work, when flipped over, tells a different narrative of staircases. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY7BOlSqbt0