Place: Apartment Bastille (17.93m²)
The Bastille-area studio was Steven’s main Paris apartment from roughly June 2021 to December 2023. It is one of the most constraining places in the record.
Physical conditions
The apartment was 17.93m². It had no proper bed, only a fold-out bed that was too short and a sofa that was too small. One room served as workspace, bedroom, kitchen, and living room. The lack of separation between sleep, work, and daily life became part of the apartment’s meaning.
Steven later described the arrangement as wearing him down from the inside. The problem was not only comfort. It was the absence of any spatial boundary that would let him switch modes.
Visibility
The apartment faced another building at close range, with the neighboring windows slightly above his own. When the neighboring apartment was empty, the issue did not matter. When someone moved in and occasionally stood at the window, Steven closed the curtains and kept them closed for months.
The relevant condition was not certainty of being watched. It was the possibility of being watched without being able to verify it. That uncertainty was enough to activate masking.
Rent dispute
Steven paid a complement de loyer that he later identified as illegal. He assembled a legal file, sent a formal notice, and prepared a CDC filing. The case later collapsed when the administrative basis for part of the argument was annulled by the Conseil d’État.
He describes the outcome as money disappearing into the irrationality of French administrative law. The legal effort did not change the result.
What happened here
The apartment contains the main collapse sequence of 2022 and 2023. Shadow ended while he lived there. The freelance mission ended there. The March 2023 crisis and the June 2023 relapse also belong to this place.
Departure
He left in December 2023 and then spent time with his mother and friends before moving into the 19th-arrondissement apartment. See Apartment 19th Arrondissement and Masking and Social Performance.