Where do you end and where do i begin? (2024)

visual autofictions vol. 1

Do you remember that house we went to, that abandoned little place surrounded by trees? It was years ago, but I know exactly why we went there. I wanted to photograph the gloom; I was young and pessimistic.

But do you recall why we left so fast? It wouldn’t let me take the photographs of you and me against the wall — the house, it wouldn’t. I set up the tripod; we walked across the room, we turned to face the camera. My skin crawled when I saw that the camera was now pointed the wrong way.

The tripod must have loosened, but no, I’d screwed it tightly. I tried again; the same thing happened. I set it up a third time, it turned again in that same direction, away from you and me, facing the door to the other room. That was when we took our things and ran outside.

You called it ghost without mentioning the word and tried to rationalise in the same sentence. I had no words for what I’d felt beneath my skin and couldn’t explain it better since.

I got cold shivers for weeks while I fantasised about that photograph I had not taken.

Maybe that was the first time I had really felt my boundaries blur. I think it made me question the integrity of my presumed existence. When houses start to make decisions, where lies my clear distinction? Who am I when, suddenly, the things around me are not what I thought?

That unease I’d felt is unmatched since. The type of abject angst that makes you lose the sense of who or what you are.

What makes me different from a bird, a leaf, a tree? What is ‘you’ and what is ‘me’? Where do you end and where do I begin?

I had a dream where one of us was floating above the ground. The other one was dancing, bare feet lifting off the ground, but only for a second. I didn’t know which one of us was me. I woke up from that dream expecting soft, late winter sunlight, but it was pitch dark and only early January.

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