"A Space of confinement"
Instalation 2011
​
Jonas Vansteenkiste's A Space of Confinement explores the duality of domestic space as both sanctuary and prison, reflecting on the ways in which architecture mediates human experience. In this sculptural installation, Vansteenkiste draws deeply from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds, a cinematic study of fear, suspense, and the fragility of human safety within the confines of the home. For both Hitchcock and Vansteenkiste, the house, as a physical and psychological space, embodies contradictions: a place of protection that simultaneously harbors threat, a refuge that can become an instrument of confinement.
The installation is a physical manifestation of the tension between these two aspects of home. Vansteenkiste uses architectural elements—walls, doors, and windows—to represent the boundary between safety and danger, internal and external. The work focuses on the act of "boarding up" the house, an image directly borrowed from The Birds, where Mitch Brenner, the male protagonist, boards up the windows and doors of his home to protect his family from the escalating attacks of the birds. This moment in the film is not only a physical response to an external threat, but a deeply psychological gesture that signals a retreat into a controlled, isolated space. For Vansteenkiste, this act symbolizes the instinctive drive to control and contain—whether to protect oneself from external chaos or to isolate the self from the overwhelming pressures of the world.
The Dual Meaning of "To Confine"
The title A Space of Confinement resonates with a dual meaning: the literal act of restriction and imprisonment, and the more abstract notion of entrusting or delimiting. The term "confine" originates from the Latin word confinare, meaning "to border," "to entrust," or "to hold together." This duality reflects the conceptual core of Vansteenkiste’s work: the home, as a place of refuge, is also a site of fragility. It is both protective and vulnerable.
Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1975) discusses how architecture plays a pivotal role in the construction of power relations. Foucault’s theories on confinement emphasize how spaces are not neutral, but rather how they structure our behavior, shaping who is included and who is excluded. The home, as a space of confinement, structures our sense of belonging and control, yet also has the potential to become a site of psychological tension and surveillance. In A Space of Confinement, Vansteenkiste forces us to confront how these spaces—designed for comfort and security—can turn against us, becoming sites of oppression, isolation, and control.
The Influence of Hitchcock’s The Birds
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds serves as the foundational narrative for Vansteenkiste’s work, particularly the relationship between the house as both sanctuary and prison. In the film, the Brenner family's home is initially presented as a safe haven, a traditional domestic space where family life unfolds. However, as the bird attacks intensify, this home transforms into a fragile and dangerous enclosure. The boarding up of the windows and doors is a pivotal moment, symbolizing both physical and psychological containment.
Hitchcock’s genius lies in his ability to transform the domestic into the uncanny. The home, which should be a site of comfort, becomes a place of fear and powerlessness. For Vansteenkiste, this transformation of domestic space into a site of crisis mirrors the psychological processes of regression, isolation, and emotional rupture. Just as Hitchcock uses spatial tension to unsettle the viewer, Vansteenkiste uses architectural interventions to evoke a sense of confinement, anxiety, and internal struggle.
In A Space of Confinement, the boarded-up windows and doors are not simply physical barriers; they are metaphorical thresholds that trap the viewer’s gaze. Vansteenkiste’s use of materials—wood, often in a raw, unfinished state—amplifies the sense of vulnerability. These materials, which might traditionally signify warmth and protection, are now used to create a barrier that isolates and encloses. This act of sealing, of cutting off access to the outside world, becomes an existential gesture that reflects the psychological experience of being "locked in" or trapped within one’s own mind.
Psychoanalytic and Architectural Reflections
From a psychoanalytic perspective, Vansteenkiste’s work resonates with Gaston Bachelard’s exploration of the house as a space of memory and emotion in The Poetics of Space (1958). Bachelard writes that the house is more than a mere shelter; it is a place where memories, dreams, and unconscious processes are stored. The corners, attics, and thresholds of a house represent psychological spaces that correspond to the deepest layers of the unconscious. In A Space of Confinement, the house becomes a reflection of the human psyche—fragmented, tense, and vulnerable to external forces. The act of sealing the windows and doors thus mirrors the impulse to protect oneself from the outside world, but it also suggests an attempt to control the internal turmoil that may be erupting within.
Vansteenkiste’s exploration of these themes is deeply informed by the concept of "liminality" introduced by Victor Turner in The Ritual Process (1969). Liminality refers to a transitional state, a moment of suspension where change is possible but has not yet occurred. In The Birds, and in Vansteenkiste’s installation, the house exists in a liminal state: it is a space of crisis, a threshold between safety and danger, comfort and fear. The house, once a place of safety, is now caught in an in-between state, reflecting the emotional turmoil of the inhabitants.
Confronting the Internal and External
In A Space of Confinement, the house is no longer merely a shelter, but a psychological landscape—a place where internal and external forces collide. The boarding-up of the windows becomes a powerful metaphor for the way in which individuals or societies might withdraw, cut off, or entrap themselves in times of crisis. The house, once a space of external protection, now reflects the internal conflict, the struggle between security and entrapment, protection and suffocation.
By engaging with Hitchcock’s cinematic language of suspense and Foucault’s theories of space, Vansteenkiste creates a space where the boundaries between the internal and the external, the psychological and the physical, become fluid and uncertain. The installation invites the viewer to reflect on the fragility of both the architectural structures we build and the fragile psychological states that underpin them.
​
In conclusion, A Space of Confinement is a powerful meditation on the contradictions of domestic space and the psychological implications of confinement. Vansteenkiste’s use of Hitchcock’s The Birds as a reference point underscores the tension between protection and imprisonment, between the safe haven of the home and its potential to become a prison of the mind. The act of boarding up the windows becomes both a literal and symbolic gesture of psychological withdrawal—an attempt to control external chaos that ultimately isolates and fragments the self. Through his exploration of architecture, Vansteenkiste asks us to consider the dual nature of the spaces we inhabit: places of refuge, yes, but also sites of vulnerability and potential collapse.
In this way, A Space of Confinement becomes more than just an installation; it is a profound philosophical and psychological inquiry into the spaces we create for ourselves and the limitations that these spaces impose on our sense of self and belonging.
