Standing right in the middle, encompassing the history of art, photography, cinema and architecture so as not to be placed anywhere in particular: this is the unique journey of Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine as they explore the relationship between people and space.
Luca Molinari | Well, let’s start by not taking anything for granted. Would you like to tell me who you are and why you do what you do? It’s a very basic thing, by the way and it’s quite interesting because on your website you don’t talk about it, you just jump right into what you do. So, I’d like to get to know more about your creative and intellectual journey.
Louise Lemoine | We have a problem with definitions. I don’t know if I should call it a problem or rather a difficulty in simply pigeonholing ourselves. We like to cross borders or limits, to be outside any box. This is a genuine aspect of our way of working and also a choice in the way we live, think, and exist. The concept of drifting is a fundamental driving force that defines both our identity and our practice as artists and as such, it’s always a challenge to pinpoint exactly where we are located. In other words, it’s a fundamental element for us because Ila graduated as an architect but immediately veered towards imagery whereas I graduated in history of art yet I was immediately drawn to photography and cinema. We met when I had just graduated, and together we worked around the concept of drift. It’s true that the cinematic medium is our environment, but it’s also true that we don’t belong to the film industry in the classical sense and this is by choice, because we see the canon of film production as a cage that limits the invention of forms, formats, ways and expressions. Today, we work as filmmakers without ever having studied the cinema in a classical way, something that also gives us freedom in terms of language. We don’t know now and we have never known how it should be done; therefore, we invent ways of doing it, and we love that. In the beginning, when we were feeling our way, we used to say “Yes, perhaps we’re a bit this, but also a bit that.” We had feedback from gallery owners or critics who told us that we had to choose and asked us “Are you here or there?” In the end, we tried to explain that this ‘in-betweenness’ amidst various things and disciplines was precisely a powerful demand not to be located anywhere. We enjoy navigating between what is called ‘non-fiction cinema’ or documentary, if you will, in a more creative sense, but also the world of contemporary art, social sciences, and architecture. We have a rather anarchic path, and we really love it.
L.M. | Ila, do you agree with what Louise says?
Ila Bêka | Yes, I do, but I have to add something. All these expressions are interesting in terms of a major theme that has interested us from the beginning and stems a good deal from architectural studies. The first film we made, which caused quite a stir in the field of architecture, was actually an attempt to understand the relationship with space. It’s a theme that seems very theoretical but actually affects us constantly every day, at every point where we find ourselves, and on a universal scale. It’s incredible how little it’s discussed because it links us to the world, to architecture and cities, to everything, yet it’s never addressed as a subject, not even in architecture schools. Coming from an architectural background, it has always seemed quite absurd to me. In all the exams I took, I never heard or saw it being discussed, except in some of the reading I did on my own. The debate surrounding the relationship with space in architecture was in my opinion virtually absent and so when we met, the obvious question was “Why don’t you make films related to architecture?” But we didn’t want something that just promoted the architect’s work or the client, because that’s a terrible thing. Instead, we immediately thought about what could be a starting point for this reflection. We said to ourselves that actually, all it would take is to do something that is almost never done in architecture: just follow a body in a space. The choice of this body in space was crucial for us from the beginning, it couldn’t be just any body. Certainly, the relationship between the body and space is interesting, but there’s also a more social level in the choice of the body, in the sense that for us, right from the start, it was important not only to create this dialogue related to space but also to highlight those people who are never seen, who are always erased from architecture and always hidden: we’re talking about all those people who take care of spaces, and there are lots of them. This is because architecture often only gives space to people from a certain background, the sort of elite found only in architecture schools, who know everything and who explain to others how the relationship with space works whereas we wanted to approach the relationship with space from a more physical, more immediate and more intuitive perspective. So we had an epiphany. We said to ourselves that we need to follow those who maintain these spaces, those who clean, those who truly have a direct, non-conceptual but physical relationship with space all day and every day and it was from there that the choice and opportunity to do it came using an example of architecture that was iconic because the relationship was clearly much stronger, and that’s how the first film we ever made came about.
L.M. | This was “Koolhaas houselife”, your first and by now legendary film which I discovered thanks to the cover of the first issue of Abitare edited by Stefano Boeri. He had a stroke of genius because by using your work, he completely shifted the perspective concerning an icon of contemporaneity.
L.L. | Can I add a small note here, because it’s really important to contextualize this first film, we wanted something that was full of irony but also light; a film that aimed to open a debate at the time, because it’s important to remember that this was the high point of iconic architecture and a generation of international architects.
I.B. | It was the time of the ‘star architects’ or “Archistars”.’
L.L. | So, we said to ourselves, if we can contribute to bringing the medium of cinema to something different, it could open up possibilities for another kind of representation that seemed incredibly lacking at the time. The use of imagery at that time was essentially promotional, a communication tool and not much more. So, there was a sense of poverty, a meanness in the approach to representation that didn’t allow either any space for freedom and interpretation, nor any critical gaze. That’s why we thought that for the first film, we wanted a language that was almost more political with a strong message. The film was also heavily criticized for the freedom it took, but I believe there was the need at that time to break something. That’s why we used irony very much in the tradition of Jacques Tati, that is, using humour as a critical key, opening up to a backstage reality that effectively is what everyday reality is.
L.M. | Yes, I would add that more than realism, it’s a form of surrealism. There’s a displacement, suddenly, the cleaning lady becomes the Modulor, she enters the house, and measures it with her body, just as all of us measure the places we inhabit in an anonymous and individual way. Architecture is no longer the body of the architect who made it but the body of those who live in it. So, at this point, the anonymous figures you choose become estranging and unsettling presences. I find the lessons of Jacques Tati in this but also much of Perec and Bachelard, that is, the entire French culture of the everyday becoming hyperreal and extraordinary.
L.L. | It’s the extraordinary within the ordinary.
L.M. | Exactly, I find this extremely important.
L.L. | Indeed, Perec is an author who has both guided us from the beginning and been a significant starting point.
I.B. | That’s true, but then we took a slightly different direction. Perec, despite our immense admiration for him, is a mathematician, a precise, scientific, and obsessive observer. In our reading of Perec, we felt a lack of poetry; for us, it was crucial to be able to capture the poetry and beauty in everyday life, going beyond merely measuring space. A body assists every movement in measuringe space but then there is much more, in terms of the psychological relationship with places and change. We’re interested in how one adapts to a space and how much a space is capable of changing our behaviour, especially in the series of films we make about the city, where urban space greatly influences the behaviour of both the community and individuals.
L.M. | I’d like to move on to one of your most recent projects, Homo Urbanus. This is a sequence of films about different metropolises around the world and their ordinary inhabitants, which is growing over time and has been progressively exhibited in various museums worldwide from Poland to Basel and now in Bangkok. Your task is that of prompting the audience to look differently; to make them pay attention through a form of anomalous fixity towards those places that generally pass before our eyes and go unnoticed. As vision designers, you combine space, body and gaze in an original way, constructing a universe of urban and emotional fragments that help us reinterpret our metropolitan landscapes. Could you tell me about the genesis of Homo Urbanus, how it has grown, and how it has evolved over time?
L.L. | I would say I see it as an almost organic or natural evolution because we started with Koolhaas Houselife, which was the first film and a bit of our experiment that we had definitely not planned and was the first project we did together. It was a summer project, a vacation project that we then developed. So, this first film led us to develop more in-depth criticism or deconstruction of the image in architecture and for this, we made a first series of films that we called Living Architectures, which focused on this linguistic and conceptual shift. Instead of representing the architectural object, we were interested in backstage life, that is, an anthropological approach within these iconic architectures. Gradually, we expanded the frame and became interested in more urban dynamics. Some projects led us to work on the issue of public space. For example, we made a film in Paris, about the Place de la République, called 24 Hours on the Place, and this work looked at the impact of a project by French urban planners and architects, even though it was still related to a project renewing an urban space that made us understand how stimulating it was to move away from architectural space and the relationship with the figure of the architect. We opened up to the scale of the city and a world of possibilities. After this film, we made several others, always located in an urban environment, and then we had the opportunity for an artistic commission for a Biennale in Bordeaux titled Agora. This was the reason why we proposed a project with the first 5 films of Homo Urbanus. Since then, and exponentially, the project has expanded more and more, and now we have produced almost thirteen films. Constantly leaving architecture to one side, we start from the idea that the city is a constructive stratification that has developed over centuries. We no longer relate to the figure or the importance of an architect, rather we’re extremely interested in how all of us, Homo Urbanus, constantly have to adapt. We have inherited an urban environment and constantly need to find adaptation solutions, trying to make it work even though it remains an extremely complex environment. We’re highly interested in seeing how much cultural difference is at play between Europe, Asia, and America through the perspective on metropolises and their inhabitants.
L.M. | What has surprised you the most? What were the specific situations where you found yourselves completely taken by surprise compared to what you expected to find?
I.B. | All our films are created in fragments, from the very beginning, aiming to escape this global idea of a film that explains everything. They’re already fragmented from the start because observation in the city lives through total fragmentation, as in everyday life. When you go out on the street, you start to observe everything. What you’re looking at are inevitably fragments, as this is how memory is constructed. What surprised us a lot, not so much when we started filming because for us, it’s already a practice we’ve been using for a long time, was observation. It was really interesting what you said earlier, that it’s often us who don’t take the time to stop and observe, and only later do we reformulate it more precisely. Those who watch our films don’t have to spend all that time watching them in full; they can also understand what they’re seeing based on the relationships between the images we present, and it becomes a very personal observation. But more than at the moment when we film, what is interesting for example is what we did in the exhibition, which is itinerant and is even now continuing to travel. This condition is an incredible way to study and an incredible critical tool in understanding the situation in which cities find themselves today. The subject is the urban man, how he adapts or suffers in the city. Perhaps this is the most interesting thing that has emerged – that there are so many aspects that form the identity of the urban man. His life is tough, and life in the city is a very difficult adjustment, especially when you are in one of the lower economic levels of the population. An immediate thing that is understood is that space is a great luxury. These are theories that when discussed in general, you say, “We all agree,” but then when you see scenes of those who have to share tiny spaces, all together, even with the terrible quality of the external environment, it makes reality much more powerful.
L.M. | This brings out the political dimension of architecture. It’s a term that isn’t often used but is quite evident. Placing those who are unseen, those who endure space and those who have a tiny fragment of habitable space at the centre of the narrative is giving a clear political reading of the city, and this leads us to the relationship between space and the body, which is somewhat central in your recent book entitled “The Emotional Power of Space.” which was published a few months ago. There are twelve dialogues, more than conversations, with twelve authors and friends who somehow represent the world of design, but then interestingly, they don’t talk so much about architecture as about their relationship with space. They always return to the core issue, space and the body, as two elements that combine. It’s not just space, but it’s the body that measures places, and space that conforms to the body. Could you tell me a bit about the sense and reasons behind this latest book?
L.L. | We’re obsessed with avoiding compromises at any stage of producing a film, a book, or any other form of our work. We want to avoid any form of external conditioning in order to protect the integrity of what we do and while we’ve understood how things are done, we do them in a very hand-crafted, hands-on way, but we carry them out as we like. However, this also means that sometimes we have to take the books ourselves to the post office to be shipped!
L.M. | Can you tell me why you wanted to create this book?
L.L. | We see it as a sort of natural continuation of the films we’ve made so far, just changing the medium. In the book’s brief introduction, we’ve tried to explain that with every film we’ve made, we’ve always tried to shift the focus. We don’t talk about architecture in a descriptive way, but through the image, we try to capture and translate the quality or type of relationship that space creates with the people who inhabit it. In reality, it’s always this ‘in-between’ that interests us, not the person or architecture per se, but rather the alchemy that is created, what is later defined in the book in the discussion with Pallaasma as ‘the tuning of space’, which is a very interesting concept for us and quite central to the book’s approach. We don’t want to be misunderstood, but ‘The Emotional Power of Space’ isn’t necessarily a positive condition because it covers all dimensions of the psychological impact that space can provoke. We went to discuss something with the selected architects which we usually never do. Normally, we discuss things with them once we’ve finished the films, to see their reactions. On this occasion, we brought together various personalities we’ve known for years or specifically sought out because they all share something, albeit quite differently: namely, a sensory perception, working on the physical approach and physicality of architecture. This book is not so much a biographical portrait of these well-known architects, rather it represents our desire to capture their individual sensitivity through a somewhat particular strategy. What interests us is understanding effectively how architecture emerges from a sensitivity, whether innate or developed over the years, towards the relationship we have with space. We engaged with architects to create a dialogue, delving into distant memories and their own emotional recollections. We shared how their intimate relationship with space is created at an individual level, how they feel things, and how they implement these in relation to architecture.
I.B. | Right from the outset, we said that if we were going to talk about space, it was necessary to avoid talking with architects; we wanted to discuss space without the voice of the architect or other experts. Architects always style themselves as great connoisseurs of space and so in all our films, we wondered how these “space experts” create this experience, where does it come from? At the same time, we chose architects capable of creating large spaces where people feel significant emotions. Where does this sensitivity come from in an architect in order to be able to create a space with these qualities? We thought that there are key moments in an architect’s training that generate this ability and we thought it would be interesting to understand the mechanisms that create this sensitivity to space, or rather, to the experience of space. So, deciding to enter into a dialogue with them, we wanted to do it without any images, precisely to allow the architects to free their egos. We created a book with nothing but text, but we were interested in understanding how some architects whom we consider very sensitive have developed this vision and attitude. Through talking with them, we realized that very often, as with all of us, everything happens in childhood and the younger years. Perhaps the key in starting to talk about sensitivity is connected with discussing spatial memories. A number of very interesting things emerged, and in some cases, quite surprising connections between spatial memories and the first spatial emotions. This mechanism is very interesting for everyone—trying to remember what our first spatial emotions were. We’ve become so obsessed with this theme that every time we find ourselves in a dialogue, we talk about this, and so, every time, even without explicitly discussing space, memories of when one was young or a child always involve a specific place, perhaps through a smell, a light, or other elements. From there, we understood that there was indeed the possibility of opening up another aspect of this discussion about space. As Louise said, the interesting thing was not stopping simply at these beautiful emotions but trying to understand how spatial experiences created this sensitivity. Also, how this sensitivity, if misplaced, can create many negative sensations. Recently, we made a film about the hospital by Herzog and de Meuron in Basel, now on display in London, which is very interesting because it helped us delve into an aspect of emotion related to suffering, where the great capacity of architecture to accompany or even enter into the therapeutic aspect can assist the patient undergoing treatment therapy.
L.M. | So we’re moving from the idea of architecture as composition to the idea of architecture as experience.
L.L. | Exactly, completely.
I.B. | Indeed, one of the books that most struck me is Rasmussen’s “Experiencing Architecture.” When I first read it, despite the reference not being listed in any bibliography, it talked about children playing on the stairs of a church in Rome, and this image explained to me that this is the only real way to have a genuine experience with architecture. These images stayed with me so strongly that even in “Homo Urbanus” there are lots of children playing because the relationship with space changes so much from childhood to adulthood. Observing how children relate to space is extraordinary because they have a total, unconditional degree of freedom.
Text by Luca Molinari
Captions and Photo credit (from top to bottom)
– Cover – Photo © Maddalena Clericuzio
– Portrait of Ika Bêka and Louis Lemon – Photo © Maddalena Clericuzio
– Still from the film “Tokyo Ride”, Bêka & Lemoine, 2020
– Still from the film “Koolhaas HouseLife”, Bêka & Lemoine, 2008
– Poster from the film “Homo Urbanus”, Bêka & Lemoine, 2017-2023
– Still from the film “Rehab from rehab”, Bêka & Lemoine, 2023
– Still from the film “Big Ears Listen with feet”, Bêka & Lemoine, 2022
– Book cover, “The Emotional Power of Space”, Bêka & Lemoine, 2023
– Still from the film “Homo Urbanus Venetianus”, Bêka & Lemoine, 2019
– Still from the film “Homo Urbanus Tokyoitus”, Bêka & Lemoine, 2019
– Still from the film “Barbacania”, Bêka & Lemoine, 2014
– Still from the film “24 Heures sur place”, Bêka & Lemoine, 2014
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