Isabel Löfgren om Tedium Spaces: Hotel. The Expectation of Fact

digital Lambda Print, 30 x 230 cm

In a trip to Bangkok last year, I turned on the television in the hotel room late at night, expecting to find the evening news on the screen, but I found the image of an empty corridor instead. Puzzled by this image, I kept watching the channel, only to find more images of empty corridors, the hotel reception, then the garage, more empty corridors in a continuous loop of images which had transformed me from a hotel guest to a panoptical voyeur and controller of the building from inside my own room. The spheres of public and private had clashed and I began to look for something but nothing happened: a fat tourist going to his room, a waiter carrying a tray, a bored concierge. I somehow expected some action, some fact, or some violence of fact. As part of a series called “Tedium Spaces” where I photograph images of waiting rooms, receptions, and other spaces of boredom in between the events of life, this piece shows a space where we are caught waiting for something to happen. I found an overwhelming sense of meaningless control. This piece is a portrait of that hotel in any given evening, one more evening of emptiness: an emptiness-paranoia.