l'esprit de l’ espace / spirit of the space

In the ‘Paradox of acting’ Denis Diderot describes an encounter during a dinner at which a snarky remark was made to him, yet it was only ‘at the bottom of the stairs’, when he exited the house of the host, that he thought of the right reply. The installation L’esprit de L’espace/ The spirit of the space takes this sentiment - caught in the expression ‘l’esprit d’escalier’; thinking of the perfect reply too late – as its starting point. The installation tries to construct a space of belatedness - not only temporally, but also spatially - a space in which knowledge is produced besides the institutional.