The Window

The Window

Eyes’ threshold which limits the body and delimits the look, cuts out the landscape and sets a point of view. The window that opens to what is out there, to the world, widens the horizons otherwise limited by the four walls inside dwellings, as a border between collective and private. Threshold just like a door, it does not really allow, however, at least not usually, the displacement of bodies, their comings and goings. Limit to the body, threshold to the look, the window is a forstage, it creates a scene. But if what is out there, beyond the window becomes a scene what is on this side of the window, the interior, the inmost that also shows itself, unveils itelf, shows off, even if in a more restricted way to the eyes of those who are out there. The interior also becomes a scene. The window is two-faced just like Janus, the Roman god from whose name “janela” the Portuguese word for “window” is derived: “janela” comes from Latin “januella” and “janua” (little entry). Just like Juno, Janus – a two-faced god- a window has two faces, one looks inward, the other looks outward in opposition: in-out, interior-exterior, private – public, individual –  collectivel, subjective – objective. But it sets dialetic oppositions, switching the possibilities of seeing and being seen, of hiding and revealing, of getting closer and getting apart, it sets either dialogs or isolation. Windows open and close as well.

A window is more than just a hole cut on a wall which allows light and air to pass through. It is an architectonic element that makes up social relations. Through a window we can participate in the world’s events, in the public space, a window can generate encounters and dialogs as well as intrigue, gossip, disagreement as it can invade, disclose intimacies – indiscreet windows, an agreement and disagreement spot. The window and the world keep a relationship filled with a certain agressive tension.

The Renaissancist window is said to have been the first window. “In the Renaissance there is a window, a frame of the exterior that is observed from an indoor protected and controlled space. The Renaissancist window is the very first window which triggers an evolution that includes the elements that delimitate the interspace as well as the very subject and the building as a whole. The man that inhabits it, that watches and can be watched” (Luisa Felipa Antunes Lopes, “Dissertação de Mestrado em Arquitetura, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra, June 2011. available on the internet) According to this author the window creates an intimacy that it hides and allows to be revealed.

There is a variety of windows. There is the porthole, small circular or oval cut on the edge or on pediment that provides light and ventilation. There is the slit ” fresta” from Latin fenestrana – a high narrow opening on a wall to let natural light come into a building. There is the “seteira” (crenelle) which comes from the Portuguese word “seta” (arrow) which is a longitudinal slot found on the walls of fortresses throughwhich projectiles can be launched . There is the skylight, a glassed opening at the high end of a wall to lighten windowless rooms.

No matter what kind of opening there is on a wall – regular, square, rectangular, round – it is different from a door as it does not provide an access. Be it in rich dwellings or in the poorest huts, a window is the eyes of a city as the eyes are the mirror of the soul acording to Leonardo da Vinci.

The most striking thing about windows is that they appear at the same time as the subject. That scenic window which creates perspectives and points of view, that picture window traditionally traced back to Albert (1435) coincides with a flourishing subjectivity, with the advent of an embryonic subject who is able to question the world and to observe. Thus freeing itself from religion and its limitations on knowledge. That subject leads to the modern Cartesian Subject.

The window creates the subject/the subject creates the window. The observing subject creates the object of its observation: the subject of science, who is the subject of the unconscious, the subject of Psychoanalysis for Lacan.

Gloria Mota, tradução por Ângela Marcia