Manifesto of the Shades

At the border where light starts and shadow doesn’t end.

by Severin Hallauer

The shades —
they hang between us and the world.
Between gaze and counter-gaze.
Between protection and exposure.

Their slats are not mere catchers of shadow,
but threshold bodies in the architectural no-man’s-land
between inside and outside.

They are revelation and exclusion at once —
a performance of delimitation,
where the visible is separated from the hidden,
controlled, filtered.

They are meant to shield not only from the sun,
but from the neighbors’ gazes.
From the societal spotlight
that exposes, judges, normalizes.

In the village where I grew up,
where every deviation is immediately sanctioned
and permanently inscribed into the collective memory,
shades become instruments of self-regulation.
They not only prevent others from looking in —
they also prevent stepping out.

Whoever is othered,
whoever doesn’t fit the mold,
is forced early on to recognize themselves —
not through exploration,
but through rejection.

Through gazes that do not ask, but despise.
Through an outside
that inscribes itself into the skin as judgment.

It is not a natural becoming —
it is a violent awakening.

The shades stand exactly there:
at the threshold of forced reflection.

They represent the unrelenting questioning —
a symbolic site of negotiation
one cannot escape
when society has robbed you of your innocence.

When you have been forced to recognize yourself
through the violence thrown at you.
Through the announcement
that you are not what you are supposed to be.

The shades mark the point
where protection turns into denial.

Where the need for safety
tips into a structure of invisibility.

The shades are a technical object —
and at the same time
a psychopolitical instrument.

They become a manifesto:
a symbolic site of negotiation
for self-formation.

Between inside and outside.
Private and public.
Visible and hidden.
Intimate and political.
Between coming out —
and staying closeted.

A balancing act between protection — at the cost of freedom —
and visibility, which makes one vulnerable.

A life on the edge
between emancipation and normalization.

The shades can be raised and lowered —
but never neutrally.

Their movement is a decision.
Their presence, a reminder
of what was not allowed to be.
Of what could have been.

Of the self —
and the danger of showing it.
And the impossibility of hiding,
once you’ve realized
you cannot live in the shadows.

In their silent presence,
they store the pressure to conform.
The avoidance of scandal.
The fear of village gossip.

They are the materialization of inner censorship —
a censorship that begins
long before one has words for it.

And yet —
they also stand for resistance.

For leaving them open.
For enduring.
For becoming visible — despite the danger.

For conscious vulnerability,
which is not victimhood,
but a form of power:
the power not to deny oneself.

They stand in between —
as I, too,
will always stand in between.

An existence in the interspace.
In the unorthodoxy of not belonging.
In the fragmentation that remains.

No wholeness.
No arrival.
Only a constant endurance
of the tension between
what is expected —
and what I am.

This is not about reconciliation.
It is about visibility as imposition.
About the right
to be recognized
for what one is —

beyond categories,
beyond the village,
beyond the slats.

The shades remain.
They divide.
They conceal.
And they remember.

What was.
What is missing.
And what might become possible
when we no longer
automatically pull them down.

The shades

A dedication to the other kid in the village —
the one who took his life
at the border
where light starts
and shadow doesn’t end.