Inner — Outer — Other
MEMENTO, Espace Départemental Art Contemporain, Auch, France, 2025
Inner — Outer — Other is a site-specific, immersive installation that invites audiences into a liminal world, a space suspended between the tangible and the ephemeral, where boundaries blur and perception folds inward. At its heart lies an invitation to contemplate the shifting terrain between self, space, and the unknowable presence of the Other.
The installation is a dynamic vessel for self-reflection and collective resonance. Here, light, sound, water and architectural form converge as elemental signifiers, distilled into a dreamlike environment that resists fixed interpretation. A reflective pool spans the floor like liquid glass, its stillness fractured by the movement of those who walk upon it. Above, a mirrored sphere captures a circle of light, its arc refracting and collapsing spatial perspective in real time. With each step, the viewer disrupts the illusion, dissolving the line between what is seen and what is sensed.
This is a space of dualities; hope and hesitation, the sacred and the uncanny, silence and reverberation. The work explores the architecture of feeling, how we inhabit our inner worlds, how we project ourselves outwardly and how we navigate the ambiguity of otherness, the ineffable questions that hover just beyond language.
The title maps a triadic journey:
Inner: the interior realm, subjective and intimate, a landscape of memory, emotion, and embodied awareness.
Outer: the spatial and environmental, where light, form, and sound shape our shared experience.
Other: the elusive third space, the liminal, the relational, the unknown that lives between bodies and across thresholds.
Kinetic and responsive, the work operates as a live system: the installation senses, listens and shifts. An immersive soundscape, subtly tuned to the resonance of the space, moves in tandem with the presence of its visitors. Sound drifts and migrates, echoing the architecture of breath and body, amplifying the sensation of being both inside and outside of oneself.
This continual feedback loop transforms the audience from passive observer to active co-creator. As participants move through the space, they become part of its unfolding, their gestures writing invisible choreographies in air and reflection. The installation challenges the permanence of structure and the presumed passivity of space. Instead, it posits architecture as a mutable, responsive medium, one that listens, reacts, and evolves.
Rooted in phenomenology and poetic inquiry, Inner — Outer — Other asks: How do we locate ourselves in space? How does space, in turn, shape our sense of self? And what arises in the interstice between individual and collective, between the known and the unknowable?
Interview with Sebastian Kite about the installation, its concept and experience:
Specification
Specification
Dimensions: 6m x 5m x 6.5m
Media: 2.5m⌀ mylar inflatable, tensile cabling, 2kw LED, transmission screen, wood, rubber, water, sound
Credits
Commissioner: MEMENTO Espace Départemental Art Contemporain, Auch, Les Abbatoirs, Toulouse, FRAC
Curator: Karine Mathieu
Photography: Cyril Boixel
