“Breath”
​
video installation. 120x250, 2007
In Breath (2007), Jonas Vansteenkiste presents a video installation that explores themes of spatial proximity, longing, and unseen relational dynamics. The work captures a quiet, intimate moment: through an open window, the viewer glimpses the facade of a neighboring house, where another window is also ajar. Inside, a curtain moves gently in the wind. This movement is mirrored in the foreground window, where the curtain responds with a similar rhythm. The two spaces, though physically separated, become synchronized through this delicate choreography of fabric and air.
Vansteenkiste creates a visual and emotional tension by focusing on this subtle interplay. The curtains, animated by the wind, become intermediaries—agents of a silent, breath-like communication between otherwise disconnected interiors. In this way, Breath frames the everyday as a site of quiet resonance, where even the most mundane architectural elements participate in an ephemeral dialogue.
The installation evokes the affective qualities of what philosopher Gaston Bachelard termed “intimate immensity.” In The Poetics of Space (1958), Bachelard describes the home as a vessel for reverie, memory, and emotional projection. Here, Vansteenkiste’s open windows function as thresholds between inside and outside, self and other, interiority and shared atmosphere. They offer not only a view but an affective exchange—one that is orchestrated not through speech, but through rhythm, light, and movement.
Breath is less a narrative than a visual meditation. It resists linear interpretation and instead stages a moment of poetic connection—a kind of architectural empathy. The houses never touch, the people remain unseen, yet the synchronized motion of the curtains suggests a deep, unspoken intimacy. There is a palpable sense of longing, a quiet yearning between the two spaces, made visible through the choreography of air and fabric.
In its formal restraint and atmospheric subtlety, Breath exemplifies Vansteenkiste’s ongoing interest in the psychological dimensions of space. By focusing on the barely perceptible—on rhythm, suggestion, and relational absence—he invites viewers to attune themselves to the emotional registers embedded within architecture. The installation thus becomes a contemplative space in itself, one where presence is felt precisely through what remains unspoken, unreachable, and in motion.
