“Set wide the window. Let me drink the day” – Edith Wharton. As some of us around the world begin to emerge from lockdown due to the Covid...
“Set wide the window. Let me drink the day” – Edith Wharton.
As some of us around the world begin to emerge from lockdown due to the Covid-19 virus, perhaps we shall always recall the time we spent indoors captive in our homes, as a defining characteristic of the pandemic.
Viewed through this prism, the trusted window of our home has never been more symbolic. As a liminal object – the threshold between one form and another – the window offers a glimpse into the outside world, providing a new scale to a visual field we have no longer owned for a while due to our enforced isolation.
Those photographs of Italian residents singing and playing music from their windows to boost morale and solidarity have evidenced the window as an essential vehicle for sociality. As a recent article in the New York Times observed on the subject of balconies, “The genius of the balcony is to assemble people who live within proximity, but who are otherwise strangers, around a common world of events, experiences and issues”.
Similarly, the window in today’s pandemic is a reconstituted space in which sociality is mediated and yet, we remain isolated and enclosed behind the window. In this...
