Project 2 // From Here to There

“REST- ROOM- AURANT”

 

 

In this short film “REST- ROOM- AURANT”, it captures a person eating in a public bathroom located in a basement of Melbourne city. A lot of the times, we think eating in a bathroom is something that will gross people out. We try to avoid conversations that are related to bathroom when we are on the dining table because we think it is something that is not acceptable to discuss while eating. However, eat and excrete is an important cycle on human and even animals, as a result I’ve decided to capture the actions of eating in a bathroom. Restroom an restaurant are very similar, they both are a place where we “rest”, but what makes it different is the impression and belief we always have in mind that oppose these two places, “Places and non- place are opposed like the words and notions that enable us to describe them.” -Marc Auge. In this case, we can say that the restroom is the place while the imaginary restaurant is the non- place.

One thing I notice is that when there’s no one using the restroom’s facilities, it immediately transforms into a whole new place, it became a playground for us, those facilities became useless as we don’t have the intention or need to use them as what they are meant to be for. I very agree with Marc Auge in his “Non- Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity”, he mentioned, “…places and spaces, places and non- places intertwine and tangle together.” How we look and use the place is what defines the place as, the integration of human brings energy to the “place”. Throughout this video, strangers often appear on the sides of the frame and the reflection of the mirrors, these are moments to remind the audience that this place was intentionally not used for what the video is trying to show, these are moments where reality breaks through the dream. During the production, it catches a lot of people attention, strangers use their phones to capture us, this action suddenly brings these strangers to another place, as if they are taking photos of food in a restaurant.

The sound of this film acts significantly as it’s role is to “distract” the audience from the unpleasant feeling. The sound was created with water dropping; it is formed with an echo effect to create this continuous repetition. All through the film, the atmosphere sound of the restroom is softly played in the background, however I chose not to use any sound effect for the eating action because the idea of “restaurant” is a place that doesn’t really exist, it is an imagination. As for the start, the sound of flushing is like a gate where it ends the “place” and enters the “non- place”, audience don’t get to see any actions of using the facilities properly as it wasn’t intended to be.