Belgian author frees herself after a month in glass room at museum

By Omer Tugrul Cam

ANTWERP, Belgium (AA) – Following a month in a glass room at an Antwerp museum for an artistic experiment, Belgian writer Saskia De Coster has recently freed herself after she has completed her last book.

The 47-year-old author started her experience on Feb. 1 when she locked herself in a 12-square-meter (129-square-feet) room with glass walls at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts.

De Coster, who writes books in Flemish, the Belgian dialect of the Dutch language, aimed to finish her latest novel in the room without having any social contact.

She called her initiative "The Author is Present," and hoped to get new inspiration from the museum’s visitors as well as the works of classical artists, such as Renaissance painter Jan van Eyck and Baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens.

In an interview with Anadolu, De Coster talked about her month-long experiment, calling it "a big challenge."

The writer said she called her initiative "The Author is Present" because she was there in a cubicle around the clock and even slept in the museum.

"I thought that's going to be it, audience can watch me ... just see what I wrote, (they) can see my notes ... like total openness but during the month I started to notice it's not just one direction, I also need the audience," De Coster said.

She also realized that people who were watching her during that time fed her "encouragement and energy."

"The audience was so inspiring, so great," she added.

About nights at the museum, she said it was good to know there was security staff at the museum and so she felt safe.

"Because at night here, it's kind of creepy. It's very windy, there's like all the time wind," she said. De Coster likened it to "a gothic tale."

The writer said she wanted to write about human relations and interaction, so it was very fruitful to focus on this in what she called "a very contained world" without using social media.

De Coster said her son was the only person who visited her, and she heard about the powerful earthquakes in Türkiye last month from him.

"That was one of the hardest things for me," she said, referring to difficulty of a situation when people are not able to share with anyone about the disasters like the one which happened in Türkiye.

Unlike other similar practices like Serbian artist Marina Abramovic or British music composer and singer PJ Harvey, she even slept and ate at the museum during February.