Peckham Digital

Artist

Eden Chahal

`and you what are you looking for?`

Free. Artwork shown as part of main exhibition.

Eden was trained in architecture in Paris and Madrid before practicing in a wide range of studios. Instead of constructing the physical environment, her practice focuses on building narrative tools, with cities as a subject and space as a material. She investigates human experiences of inhabiting places, to answer the question: what remains of architecture when it becomes a memory? With writing at its core, her work is research based and matches diverse techniques by combining fixed and moving images, spatial and sound installations, interactive fictions, XR.

‘and you what are you looking for?’ makes reference to the book of Rene Daumal, The Analog Mount. It is a story about a quest towards what first appears as an imaginary place. The author wrote it while he knew he was condemned, and passed before he could write the last chapter that was meant to be titled “And you, what are you searching for?”.

It unfolds across a haussmannian apartment, where objects are scattered, each one holds a story about inhabitants of the apartment, you only meet them through these artefacts. Gathering fragments of the lives that might have happened, you will have to collect them in a specific order. When found, objects open new spaces for you to reach for the following one. On your quest, you will notice distorted gates. By passing through them, you will be offered two paths to build an environment and a story. Some hold sounds that might bring images to your mind, others will trigger objects to appear. You can build other memories at any point by going to the table of content. This also allows you to take a break from the game, or read this foreword again.