Laundry Dreams

Video poem and installation by Giacomo Marinsalta
Music by Lola Lextrait

Can an everyday gesture and an ordinary object like laundry—typically excluded from the aesthetic gaze—reveal their own form of beauty?

The words of a poem accompany a life suspended between dream and reality, in a journey made of images of sheets and clothes hanging in the wind along the streets of a Mediterranean city. 

The evocative image of laundry blurs the boundaries between inside and outside, public and private. Through narrow alleys, balconies, and windows, the fabrics are transformed into language, architectural ornament, and a symbol of care and resistance, in contrast with an urban policy increasingly dominated by the aesthetics of decorum.

The project takes shape from the thesis research for the Master of Arts in European Media Studies at the University of Potsdam, entitled “Laundering Dreams in the Porous City – The Political Aesthetics of Laundry in Public Space.”