Room 208
Video by Salar Niknafs
Music by Terma (Salar Niknafs and Babak Navak)
Sep 2019, Melbourne
Room 208 is a surreal space in Haruki Murakami’s ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’, which exists within darkened corridors of a subconscious labyrinth. The room is where the protagonist finds his innermost fears, reminiscent of Room 101, the repository of every person’s greatest fear in George Orwell’s 1984.
The Room could also symbolise women, as the protagonist compares being in the room to being with a woman: “I concentrate on my mark and think about the room. I try to separate from myself, just as I do whenever I am with a woman. I try to get out of this clumsy flesh of mine, which is crouching here in the darkness. Now I am nothing but a vacant house, an abandoned well.”
Freud also suggests a connection between the room symbol and femininity as he associates “Boxes, cases, chests, cupboards and ovens represent the uterus, and also hollow objects, ships, and vessels of all kinds – Rooms in dreams are usually women”.
Music by Terma (Salar Niknafs and Babak Navak)
Sep 2019, Melbourne
Room 208 is a surreal space in Haruki Murakami’s ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’, which exists within darkened corridors of a subconscious labyrinth. The room is where the protagonist finds his innermost fears, reminiscent of Room 101, the repository of every person’s greatest fear in George Orwell’s 1984.
The Room could also symbolise women, as the protagonist compares being in the room to being with a woman: “I concentrate on my mark and think about the room. I try to separate from myself, just as I do whenever I am with a woman. I try to get out of this clumsy flesh of mine, which is crouching here in the darkness. Now I am nothing but a vacant house, an abandoned well.”
Freud also suggests a connection between the room symbol and femininity as he associates “Boxes, cases, chests, cupboards and ovens represent the uterus, and also hollow objects, ships, and vessels of all kinds – Rooms in dreams are usually women”.
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