“Life: An Instruction Manual” by Georges Perec is a legendary avant-garde novel by a French experimental writer of the OuLiPo group, its construction based on a cross-section of a building, showing the lives of its inhabitants.

Welcome to life.

To life: an instruction manual.

To Perec’s inventory space,

To a space of invention

where objects are listed, inventories drawn up, and catalogues made.

In the building on Rue Crubellier 11,

In a space of memories coded into absolute fictions, quotes, and encrypted quotes

one that conceals a hollow feeling.

The inhabitants of this building live merely a few centimetres from each other, they are only separated by a thin wall. In this time they make identical movements: they turn on faucets, run water, light lights, set tables—altogether perhaps a few dozen gestures: floor after floor, house after house, street after street.

Welcome to life.

To a house, a place of inhabitance, hospitality, and neighborliness.

In an illusion that hides irrevocable homelessness.

In the theatre, upon an empty stage, which must be laid, filled, and drained to the core.

In Europe, which has given so much to the world, and taken so much in return.

In the building on Rue Crubellier 11,

In a makeshift home, where storytelling is an affirmation of life, a flight from rupture, disappearance, and lack.

In a Borgesian Alef, a place where the whole world becomes visible all at once.

Welcome to the eternal story of nomads and refugees.