Dwellers that do not Belong, Dwellings that no Longer Exist: Staging Hotel Interiors and (Unhomely) Domesticity in Experimental Documentary Film

Abstract

Commonly known as non-places or stopping places, hotels create their own sense of domesticity and seclusion, simultaneously invoking an uncanny screen presence due to their non-contradictory nature. Likewise, this article builds on the theory of an architectural uncanny and weirdness to analyze how Chantal Akerman’s Hôtel Monterey and Pat O’Neill’s The Decay of Fiction delineate interior spaces to evoke an (un)homely domesticity and (un)belonging human presence. In particular, to prioritize the hotel architecture, Akerman relies on a partial and fragmentary representation of interiors, whose larger picture is always beyond spectators’ vision, and O’Neill’s creates an engrossing tension between haptic visuality and optical perception, which gives rise to the fetishism of decay. Consequently, while Hôtel Monterey’s indoor architecture presents a spectacle of largely mute, impenetrable spaces with no or little human interaction, The Decay of Fiction’s domestic spaces form a permeable layer through which shadowy figures continuously enact their fictional roles.