Prelude

Juliet's balcony in Verona, Italy.

Balconies are perpetually in between. They exclude others from entering ‘our’ homes, while occupying public space. They accommodate voyeuristic inclinations. We often want to know - up to a certain extent - what neighbors are up to. We could say that the balcony is made for the curious, for the observers among us. We are not completely hidden, but not entirely exposed either. We can try to remain unseen. The most extreme example in this regard is probably the panopticon. The concept of the design was to allow all residents of an institution - mostly prisons - to be observed by a single watchman, without the prisoners knowing whether or not they were being watched.

The balcony can also serve the opposite purpose: it can be used as a stage. History schoolbooks and our collective memory are full of balcony scenes. From Nelson Mandela making his first public speech after his release from prison in 1990 on the balcony of the Cape Town city hall, to the outrage after Michael Jackson dangled his struggling nine-month-old son over his hotel balcony in Berlin. 

Balconies offer the perfect site for dramatic scenes of longing, allowing for communication but ensuring enough physical distance. (The cliché example being star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet. By the way, Juliet’s balcony in Verona was added to the façade only in 1936 when the city’s residents were fed-up telling tourists that the balcony didn’t exist. It was taken from an ancient sarcophagus and re-purposed to match the Medieval architecture of the house). More recently, the balcony became an extra desired site and privileged asset during the Covid pandemic, for it allowed one to be outside during lockdowns. And to keep contact with neighbors, even sing together.

But balconies can also live inside buildings. Interestingly, they were often reserved for musicians. Inside churches, balconies were sometimes provided for singers, and in party rooms for bands or ensembles. More conceptually speaking, musicians and other artists are perhaps natural inhabitants of balconies. Works that are created at home or in a studio, at some point find their way outside into the world, to meet a public. The balcony occupies this phase between private and public, in the process of making public.

In his manifesto ‘Balconism’, media artist Constant Dullaart states that “we’re all outside the balcony now. Standing on a platform made out of a tweet into corporate versions of public space.[…] We publish, we get read. ok. Private publishing does not exist, we now know we always get read (hi). To select what we want to have read, and by whom, is our greatest challenge rly.”

One could say that the internet has turned us all into balcony-residents, where we both intentionally and unknowingly (or semi-consciously) are seen and observed, and observe others. How do processes of making public change over time? And how do we divide ourselves and the spaces where we live and work between what is public, common or private?


This third issue of //\ hoekhuis magazine looks at the balcony as a contested site of privacy, as a space to perform and desire, as a site to observe our surroundings. Through works of music, image, design and fiction and a series of conversations, we dream about verandas without balustrades, or balconies with bridges and stairs that connect us with others.

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