During the COVID-19 pandemic, a certain type of image grabbed everyone’s (albeit small) attention span—the image of empty cities, devoid of people, of cars, of life and the chaos that makes the urban experience. Would people miss the teeming life of public spaces or revel in the possible return to nature? At the time, the question seemed without answer; people were locked into their homes for what seemed like an eternity. Now, in 2025, everything (or almost everything) seems to have returned to seeming normal—the empty, almost dystopian images seem like something from a bleak fantasy. It was during these moments of isolation that artist and filmmaker duo Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine conceived of Homo Urbanus. The project, which could be translated to ‘urban man’, is "a freewheeling journey around the world" (as stated on the duo’s website), offering a glimpse into public spaces—and the life they hold—in 13 cities around the world. The ongoing series, ambitious in its scope, hopes to allow viewers to observe the minutiae of living in urbanscapes: the various interactions and the moments of reprieve.

Since the inception of the series in 2017, the films have been shown in different venues, including arc en reve in Bordeaux, the American Academy of the Arts in Rome and architectural biennales in São Paulo and Seoul. Currently, the films are on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon, Portugal, from October 17, 2024 – April 20, 2025. On the occasion of the exhibition's opening, STIR spoke to the filmmaker and artist duo—renowned for training their uncompromising eye on 'architectural marvels'—to talk about the project and how it marks a shift away from the architectural scale in their work. Speaking about the undergirding philosophy of their work, Lemoine notes in conversation, “What we are really interested in is [capturing] the invisible dynamics of how people relate to space on a physical dimension; that is how we collectively make use of public space, but the imperceptible and invisible impacts which are more psychological and emotional of our presence in such spaces. This has been the line of research for many years.”

For the project, while looking at these different aspects of the city and urban design, particularly how public space is occupied and variations of these behaviours with climates, geographies and cultures, a principal aspect was the spontaneity of the exercise. The duo truly let themselves freewheel through the city, capturing disparate moments that interested them, almost like a social media dump, but with an anthropological thesis. The pair underscores the notion of immersion and experience and the personal in the public in the conversation, noting, “If you go in the same street in Mumbai, you will see different things, in different moments and different sensibilities. You have a different culture, so everything is different, but it's just an exercise of sensibility. [For ‘Homo Urbanus’, this] is what we saw and experienced. As Bruno Zevi said, the only way to experience space is to be inside. Maybe the only thing you have learned about that place from watching our film is not something about the place, but something about your sensibility that you can develop to observe things,” Bêka explains almost matter-of-factly.

This idea of immersing oneself in the city through the cinematic qualities of the footage is further underscored in the exhibition design. The space where the films are shown is conceived as an immersive installation, aiming to “reproduce the urban spectacle in its integrity, posing the viewer inside the scene,” as an official release mentions. By creating a layout with large screens and effective sound design, the installation is meant to transport visitors, allowing them to inhabit a different urban plane and reflect on how we may live together as cities continue to expand. The ‘visual notes’, as the duo prefer to call the films, offer glimpses into our ordinary urban practices, customs and habits, our behaviour, everything that escapes us and speaks of us, the inhabitants of our cities—like a flâneur collecting evidence of people in a particular setting.

“Architectural exhibitions go through this sort of distancing. They deal with the city through the framework of mostly data, information, documents, etc. They will give you some tools to understand situations, social conditions, economic situations, political influences, etc. But in the end, it will remain a very conceptual, rational understanding of the situation. What we are trying to do is to really emphasise all the qualities of cinema. This is a cinematographic exhibition in which you will be completely emotionally immersed because we are talking about image, sound and physical experience...we use the qualities of cinema to deal with spatial questions and to also replace the scale of the individual rather than just remaining on the sort of very conceptual understanding of subjects,” Lemoine explains emphatically.

In one of the clips that the duo shared with STIR, a man is washing utensils on the pavement. This cuts to a scene of torrential rain in Venice. This might then cut to a secluded scene somewhere in Russia, where a man waves at the camera. Not only are some of these clips indicative of how we conduct our lives in public, but some (such as the Venice clip) are reminders of the current moment we live in, marked by ever-increasing (in frequency and intensity) climate disasters and the perils of rapid urbanisation.

What’s also vital to observe is the constant moving hand of the camera, the ceaseless movement of the contemporary metropolis that Impressionists tried to capture with their blurred paintings. In much the same way, the movies document what it means to experience the city as a series of fleeting moments. Recently, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light (2024) foregrounded this very aspect of Mumbai, capturing the instability of the migrant experience. The films, by offering an unfiltered take on a place, also ask one to question the design of public spaces and their accessibility. In other moments, the constant shift between different perspectives can feel fragmented. However, perhaps that is the condition that defines the urban landscape today. “These films explore our condition as a human animal and how the city—this artificial environment that we build around us every day like an extension of our contemporary bodies—shapes and conditions us. Taken on the fly, these visual notes look at an urban man not only within his group but also in the depths of his solitude, redesigning the outlines of the city according to a kind of emotional geography,” the pair describe.

Tap the cover video to watch the full conversation.