MEGAWRA LECTURE | Interiority – The Discourse of Split Screens | Adham Selim

Modernism distinguishes clearly between interiority as a function of enclosure – usually embodied by a universal whole that wraps spaces and carves them out of a global exterior – and structure, merely as a function against gravity, usually embodied by something to hold the roof from collapsing.

Historically, this was not the only form in which questions of interiority were addressed; however, nowadays there is a renewed interest in this particular understanding of interiority, largely for political and environmental reasons.

These days, buildings are understood as energy-efficient seamless wholes, self-enclosed systems only able to function via the agency of an external perimeter. The same observation might well apply for historical models that are being praised on the ground of their energy performance. An economy of energy seems to dictate a new/old vocabulary for architects, a vocabulary of walls, borders, barriers, screens, breaks, curtains, and fueled by a grammar of privacy.

On the other hand there is an ever increasing need in the real estate markets worldwide to produce self-enclosed communities, where isolation and permeation is controlled – again – through an external perimeter. In many cases the same model applies for whole cities where imaginary zones are devised in a similar fashion to assist in security enforcement. The sight of whole portions of cities in first and third world alike being fenced is no longer an anomaly. Fencing might be physical, aided by architecture that is growing bigger with security challenges in a number of cities such as Beirut and Cairo, or virtual aided by surveillance systems and ‘Videoüberwachung’ in Europe, where movement in the city is actually a transitory function between different surveillance networks. The result is the same: a global exterior that is turned into a somewhat global interior.

In this situation architecture is reduced to a vehicle towards environmental sheltering and energy saving or security fencing. This opens the door for speculations on the future of architecture as a political tool, and also raises many disciplinary-specific questions about what the “interior” might be in comparison to the “interior as environmental shelter” and the “interior as a security fence”. What are the qualities a space should have in order to qualify as interior? How to systematically induce moments of difference ‘singularities’ in this global exterior? Can interiority as a way of creating meaning and difference be thought of on the ground of visual practices of montage and collage?

Join us for a long and sophisticated discussion on interiority in philosophy, psychology, politics, cinema, and architecture.