[from London] post-event notes

Is home a location? An environment, a feeling? What makes us feel “at home”?

Home cannot be reduced to one thing and certainly that is most likely the case for people who live far away from their country of birth. The experience of settling in a new environment takes shape through personal choices and external influences. In that journey, one can strive for co-existence and the merging of worlds, even if it is not the easiest path. 

“At Home” by @garyeow gave us an opportunity to talk about these issues from multiple perspectives, touching on the complexities behind this simple word: home.

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The nomad never leaves a space, the nomad is here on earth. 

For the nomad, a place does not have limits, no contours. 

Even the elements of his dwelling are conceived according to the journey he is taking. 

(Deleuze/Guattari)

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I don’t have a particularly strong sense of “home”. I am more attached to the notion of the unknown and distance. 

Probably because distance shaped my perspective on the world and that is what I explore in my book Hitokoto: landscapes of the heart.

I also find comfort through movement and exploration. 

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One of my strongest memories of being away from home is a chapter in my childhood when I spent several holidays in Algiers with my close friend at the time. I was around eight years old and travelling without my parents. My friend’s mother is Algerian and we stayed with her family. They had a beautiful house with a courtyard decorated with traditional ceramic tiles. Oranges in the garden that we could pick and eat. We ate couscous every other day, went to local markets. We had to take cold showers in a bathroom with just a hose and a bucket but I never felt uncomfortable there, because everyone took care of me, and it became a home far away from home.

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The quality of light within a space; the beauty of shadows and light give me a sense of home even in unknown places. The warmth of sunlight, the way it enters through a window, maybe at an angle, forming geometric shapes on the wall or the floor, makes me feel at home.