Invisible Brussels started out as a PhD project in a carpentry apprentice centre in the Brussels district of Molenbeek and is an ongoing, open-ended collection of impressions. It tells about Cise: a slender, spirited man in his mid-fifties, and the oldest of a group of carpentry apprentices in Molenbeek who shared their stories with me, an eager-to-learn anthropologist. It also glimpses into the life of Hamuda, a carpentry master always impeccably dressed and precise in his work. Our various paths – from the Ivory Coast, Tunisia and Austria – crossed in Brussels, the city where life had brought us because of choices we had made. Together, we improvise, in carpentry and in life, trying to understand what it means to craft a life on the margins. Some of it is captured here. If you don’t mind going places without a map – look around!
