In Search of Home: Lupita Nyong’o and Emanuele Coccia

0:00Lupita. Hello everyone. Lovely to meet you. Nice to meet you. I'm so happy. So am I. Welcome to Chanel Connects. I'm Yana Peele, President of Arts, Culture and Heritage at the House. For Season 5, we journey to La Pausa, Gabrielle Chanel's villa on the French Riviera, to hear artists and innovators discuss the future of creativity and the innate curiosity that powers their work. For our first episode, Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong 'o connects with renowned philosopher Emanuele Kocha. So I'm Lupita Nyong 'o, and I'm an actor and Chanel ambassador, and I'm really happy to sit here with you today.

0:45I'm Emanuele Kocha. I'm a philosopher, and I'm also extremely happy and honored to have this conversation with you. Let's go. So can you talk to me a little bit about the podcast and how this podcast you're doing is relating to the ADR film? Well, I made the podcast Mind Your Own because I was homesick and I had been living in America for a long time. And though I visit my country, Kenya, often, I missed living in our stories. You know, being in America, there was just a dearth of African stories of that nature. And so I thought it would be nice to create a space where Africans, primarily from all over the world, could feel more at home one story at a time.

1:41And so for me, I think that stories have the power to invite and to be a momentary home. Yeah. That's beautiful. That's very beautiful. So that was the idea, thank you, that was the idea behind the podcast to just make it feel cozy no matter where you are by sharing a moment in time with people who come from where, a place you once called home. But in a way, it's very close to the space because in a way, when you say to create or to make a home out of a story, a story which becomes for other people a sort of myth or legend or like a fairy tale, it's exactly the same concept of coming to this home, having a home just for a holiday.

2:30You know, it's like suspension of normal time, of ordinary time and immersion in another time, in another space. So it's quite the same. It's beautiful. So what made you write philosophy of the home? There are very, very few books about houses and homes. Even in architectural tradition, you have a lot of very important kind of books about cities. I mean, Paul has a lot of people wrote about cities, but very few people wrote about houses. So I also wanted to write a book on homes because it's an object that was neglected both by philosophy and by architecture or architectural theory at least. You challenged the idea that home is a place.

3:19Yeah. Yeah. I challenged this idea because I used to move a lot of times, like over 40 times in my life. Wow. Yeah. What brought about such constant moving? you should ask my I don't know no I don't know it was mainly because of work so that's why I'm not identifying as a home without please because whenever you are you are moving you realize two things which are first of all that your house is not like the walls and the roof it's first of all a set of objects or persons or dogs that you need to have close to you. In a way, when you're moving, you're bringing those objects to the next place. And those little words, it's like your home.

4:13This set of objects or persons are like what makes your happiness real, what makes your happiness a part of the world. So it's not just a set of feelings or emotions. In a way, project what is in your consciousness. Outside. You also moved a lot. I mean, no? And what are your experiences with the fact of moving and also changing? Because you change also continents, cultures. Yeah. I think for me, moving was kind of instilled in me through my parents. My parents traveled a lot when I was younger. So I was born into a world where people didn't sit still. So the idea of moving was familiar. I was born in Mexico.

5:06My father was in self-exile there. My conscious years came in Kenya. Yeah. But I have a Mexican name. So there was some part of me that always knew there was another place where I belonged. And so with observing my parents travel so much, they always went away and came back. I got programmed to understand that I too one day would move. And so, of course, it's difficult. The first time I moved away from home was when I was 16 years old. And that's a very, very... From Kenya to Mexico. And I moved without my parents. So that was a big growth spurt for me. And I remember getting to Mexico and feeling so lost.

5:57I was finally in this place that I had a passport for the place. I had a name from the place, but it was completely foreign to me. You know, I didn't speak Spanish. I didn't understand the culture. I didn't understand the food. I didn't understand the music. I didn't have a sense of the rhythms at all. And I was desperate to go back home to Kenya. Oh, really? Oh, I was desperate. But obviously, I couldn't just turn around and go back. It's what, a 30 hour trip. So I obviously had to adapt and adjust to it. And I think a part of making home is growing familiar with a place with a sense of necessity.

6:41And for me, that was the thing. I needed to familiarize myself with Mexico in order to be able to survive it, you know, because I think for me, home is finding peace. And so when I can find peace in a new environment, when I can make it more familiar, then it can feel like a version of home. But I also think that for me, there is no place in the world that feels like a perfect home. I feel there's parts of me when I'm in Kenya that are so relaxed because I speak the language, the food is the food I grew up on. and I can relax a certain part of me that is never relaxed when I'm in America. And vice versa.

7:26Yeah. Because I've adapted and grown with the places that I have called home at one point or another. But that's right. I think in a way there is this illusion for some people to consider that their home is just the place where they were born. But actually, as you said, we are always transforming a place into our home. Yeah. And it's beautiful and it's very important to, in a way, to repeat this exercise. Yes. And to transform not every place, of course, but to have this capacity, ability of, in a way, it's a magical act. Because what you just told me about what happened in Mexico, in a way, it was a sudden enchantment, a spell that you...

8:14Yeah, that I cast, that I had to cast. Yeah. And in a way, this is perhaps what we call home, this spell, this cast. In a way, also when Coco Chanel came here, casted this spell, and this place, which has nothing to do with Chanel, suddenly became a pausa, which is now so identified with her. And the same is, I suppose, with your houses and homes, no? Yes, I think so. So I've also experienced a hesitation to make a place a home. I remember when I graduated from drama school and I moved to New York, being an actor is a thing where there's just no certainty of the future. You don't know when your next job is going to come and whether you're going to be able to afford the life you've chosen to live.

9:06And so I was nervous about making my first apartment home. I was sleeping on a mattress for a long time. And then I had a conversation with my mom. And I was telling her about how uncertain I was to actually make certain financial investments to make my apartment more of a home. And I just felt so displaced because I felt unrooted. And my mother said to me, make every space you occupy your home for as long as you are there. Oh, amazing. And that really resonated with me. And I immediately went and purchased a bed. And that was her way of imparting what she'd learned. Because my father, we moved to Mexico because my father was in political exile.

9:57And so there was no telling how long they were going to be in Mexico. So she actually learned that lesson there where she was like, okay, I don't know how long I'm going to be here. I need to learn what I can so that this place feels familiar. And also what you just told about the fact that you are accepted to have a home. Because at the beginning you said you were resisting. Yes, exactly. This is also interesting that sometimes we are resisting to this spell, to transform a space into our... Because I don't know if there are some risks or some fears because you are afraid perhaps to lose something whenever you are like, as you said, you are becoming Mexican again.

10:46But then does it mean that you're... I remember when I was young, I was afraid to learn new languages because I was afraid to lose my native language. Oh, yeah. I get that because I had to learn how to do an American accent. And that caused so much turmoil in my head because I felt like I was losing myself in learning to express myself in a different accent. So no, that makes sense. And it's about, for me, I think one of the things that I'm grappling with now is a fear to overly identify with a place as my home because I live in Los Angeles. We just had those fires in the start of the year and my neighborhood was destroyed.

11:36Luckily, my house is still standing, but a place that seemed so safe to me is no longer that. I can no longer claim that kind of safety with certainty. And so it's challenged my relationship with my home and really kind of displaced me. Because while my home is still standing, the safety I felt in it, the peace is no longer the same. So again, home is not just about space. It's about how you feel in that space. It's the atmosphere and the vitality. It's a word, actually. It's a sort of... A British anthropologist, his name is Daniel Lerner, wrote a very beautiful book called Comfort of Things, where he just took a street in London with 30, 40 apartments, and he analyzed the way how every single owner of the apartment settled down and reinvented the order within this apartment.

12:52But he described this kind of choices, not in terms of aesthetics, but in terms of cosmogonic acts. Each time that you're making home, you are reproducing, creating a new world, actually. But they are always vulnerable or fragile worlds. And that's why we are always threatened to have to leave in a way. And I think we will be more and more threatened to move because of person's climate change. You mentioned this earlier, but I think our homes are extensions of ourselves. So I carry myself to all these worlds that I occupy. And I find that in order for me to feel most at home, I want to reach for the things that remind me of the places I am not when I am in a new place.

13:42So my home in Los Angeles is my latest home. And in it, I have obviously pictures of people that make my life make sense from all over the world. and I have pieces of furniture and art and stuff like that that remind me of other homes that are not necessarily present in the moment. And that's what makes it feel wholesome to me. They are portals in a way. Yeah, they are portals. And yeah, they are an expression of the many lives I've lived. Or you are still living. And I'm still living, exactly. In a way, this idea that we are in a spot, living all the time in this single spot, was born when we decided, we humans, decided to have a faithful relationship with a set of trees or plants.

14:41So in a way, that means that in a way, it's the garden that... It's because of gardens that we invented homes and cities, not the other way around. It's not because we invented cities and homes that we produce gardens in order to take back nature. It's the other way around. It's because we needed to be close to our gardens. Sedentary. That's why, for instance, there is a very famous architect in the Thurition of the past, Lugier, who used to live in France in the 18th century, who said that the very first house was built with branches of a tree. So in a way, homes and houses had always this kind of very close relationship with the plants.

15:27And I wanted to ask you, do you have a garden? Well, I did until the fires burned it down. Oh my God. But it was one of the reasons why I wanted to move to the West Coast in 2020 when the pandemic had us all sitting at home, I realized that my New York apartment did not have any outdoor space. And I felt so alone despite the fact that I was surrounded by people. And so I spent six months in upstate New York on a property that had about a hundred trees. And I felt way more at home and comforted by those 100 trees than I did by my stone apartment in New York. And so for me, gardens and outdoor space and having access to it is vital.

16:18So this garden has transformed your relationship to domestic space. Oh, absolutely. For sure. Yes. And so, I mean, my garden unfortunately no longer exists and I need to revitalize it, but it's also a chance. The thing about the garden is that it's the first thing to come back. You're right. Nature is resilient. So powerful. And nature is determined to make it. And so in my neighborhood, one month after the fires, there was grass sprouting. And I'm looking forward to regrowing the garden and finding a new expression out there for nature. But what I love about what for me is I'm not interested in taming the nature.

17:09I would love for it to be in an ideal world. My garden is an expression of what is already happening in the region. That's so beautiful. You know that there is actually there is a very, an incredible French landscape architect and gardener whose name is Gilles Flemmand. who is theorizing the idea that the gardener should never cut plants and should, in a way, form or shape a garden with the help of weeds. So a gardener should know what kind of weeds are coming and how and, in a way, should give space to weeds so that the garden is built at the same time by plants themselves and by the garden. and Gilles actually built an amazing garden not far away from here actually which is beautiful because he had this idea of building a garden which is the kind of collection of all possible gardens in the world so in a way in this space it's like he put plants from all over the world and the garden is like a sort of pangea like the recollection of all the continents Wow, that's a sight to see.

18:25Yeah, it's beautiful. It's like what you said about those kind of objects that allows you to live simultaneously in different spaces. Yeah. But I do not have a garden. Oh, you do not. Well, you wouldn't be able to tend to it. You move too much. Yeah, exactly. I'm still a hunter. I had a question for you because I was thinking, as an actor, you are obliged to live very short, but very intense moments in imaginary or fake or illusionary worlds. Yeah. Yeah. In homes, literally. Yeah. So what does it trigger this kind of experience in you? Figuring out a character's world is such an important part of understanding the person.

19:14Yeah. Because again, it's another way. I kind of work backwards with a character where their environment will inform me of who they are, whereas who I am informs my environment. Yeah. And so I look, I want to, even if it doesn't show up in the movie, I want to know what that person's space is like, how they navigate it. And I populate that for myself in my head. Because we have attachments, we have rituals that we perform in homes that we may not even recognize. But as an actor, it's my job to bring what is subconscious to the conscious so that I can fully occupy a character. And do you have, because you said you have a lot of objects that allows you to be simultaneously in different places or to extend your house.

20:11Yeah. We have now invented this device, which is like smartphones, which allows us to live actually in a house, no more in a special way. In the sense, I always consider, I don't know, this kind of social media or social devices, what's up and so on. they are ways to live together with someone who is like on the other side of the ocean. These ponds are like corridors which are connecting house to house, bypassing the city, bypassing geography, and which allows you also to feel like I'm almost everywhere. So I wanted to ask you, what's your relationship with this kind of... You know, I actually think that social media robs me of my feeling of home.

20:59Really? I do. Okay, interesting. Yeah, because first of all, there's so much going on that there's no stasis. There's no stillness on social media. And I think one quality that I really depend on in my home is stillness. Being able to leave a busy world and find calm, peace, a refuge almost, in where I lay my head at night. And social media is not that to me. It's the opposite. It's the word coming into your... Yeah, and it actually feels more impersonal to me. While I might be able to see my friend's baby shower in Kisumu City in Kenya, it's less personal because she did not share that information with me.

21:52It's being emitted into the world and anyone can see it. So actually, I feel like it robs me of feeling an intimacy. That said, I really do appreciate things like communication apps, like WhatsApp. Yeah, WhatsApp. Because that now is like… Personal. Yes, the highway is clear. It's like from me to you. Exactly. But social media as a construct, I actually don't… For me, I think it's actually dismantling the walls of home that are in my head when I'm on it. Yeah, same. But in a way, what is interesting, perhaps not social media, but let's say WhatsApp or those kind of apps, where you are deciding with whom you can speak immediately, and with whom you are not sharing your physical space, but you are sharing something like a mental space or an emotional space.

22:57But in a way, I have the impression that those people are living together with you. Yeah. And it's, in a way, if you think about that, a very, it's again what you said about the fact that a house is not a space. In this case, geographical sense, because it's like those people can be in, I don't know, in Germany, in Australia and so on. And this is to me something so revolutionary to this, because normally house was really a root. Now through this kind of, through these extensions of the houses, you can be a tomb without having at all roots. Wow. That sounds... How do you feel about that? I love it because I love it.

23:52I'm totally addicted to smartphones and apps like WhatsApp. But I love it also because I think they are connected with this. You know, houses were in the past like formed or shaped following the traditional idea of families. And today I think families are changing because of what is happening. So the idea of marriage is like, has been extended even from a legal point of view. And I have the impression that those kind of apps like WhatsApp allows to reshape at least emotionally the house as the space where you are living with your friends. That speaks to me of family. Yeah, but in a different idea of family.

24:46Right. It's in a way what you're saying about, like with your podcast, when you said, I'm offering stories. It's also a way to extend, because what you are allowing people is also to extend their family through those stories. And would you, I mean, for instance, have you ever imagined to live like in extended, Because La Pau is also a place where Coco used to live with a lot of other people. Yes. Have you ever imagined to take a home with all your friends together? No. Why? Why? I want to know why. I think because so much of my life is social. and navigating and interacting with the public sphere that I don't want my home to feel as busy as the rest of my life.

25:52That said, though, I really love the stories I've heard of this particular home and how artists like Salvador Dali came and painted and stuff like that. The idea of your home, your nest that you've created, welcoming your friends to come to take a break from their homes, from their lives. I like that idea of my home. And I personally love to welcome my friends into my home because in doing so also, they create more home for me because I don't think a home is really full or whole if it's not shared, you know? so yeah yeah as if the spell should like be pronounced by more than one person yes yes yes it was so nice to talk to you thank you so much I know it was wonderful to talk to you thank you yes and to have a very philosophical conversation no no it's so beautiful and also beautiful to have this conversation in this space in this space yeah this is Chanel Connects available to listen on Spotify YouTube Music and Apple Podcasts.

27:05Next time, ballerina Francesca Hayward meets artist and painter Alison Katz.