Five Interstellar Nights

Over 5 nights, a thermal camera installed above our bed captures the weaning process of our child, resulting in 1,800 images. They reveal exhaustion, closeness, despair, and a shift in parental roles.

After the birth of our children, I felt deeply connected to them, yet a distance remained that I could not bridge. Since my partner breastfed, I lay beside them without a role—both excluded and relieved. I longed for greater emotional closeness and a rebalancing of care.

In the summer she began weaning our younger son, I installed a thermal camera above our bed to document the five nights the process required. At two-minute intervals, it captured nearly 2,000 images: waking, soothing, carrying; anger and despair; parents moving in exhausted synchrony as roles began to shift. Broader social debates around care and parenthood contracted into the private sphere, negotiated within our bedroom.

In the images, the bed becomes an interstellar space in which mother, father, and child orbit one another—like planets bound by invisible gravity, their trajectories gradually rearranging.