I first encountered the accordion gate not as an object of nostalgia in films or photographs, but as a concrete entity, a noise-emitting presence. As a child, on humid mornings, the clatter of steel folding open was part of the street’s language. These gates were neither antique nor modern; they simply were. In shopfronts, in back alleys, they folded, and with them, accompanied by the soft thud and rustle of a folded newspaper landing and loosening at the door, the day opened.
Years later, in Gerona, Catalonia, I saw one again. A shuttered shop on an empty street, late at night, after a delayed flight from Naples. The fog blurred the lamps, which lit the pavement for no one but me. The gate was sun-bleached, rust-pocked, and worn where palms and fingers had harassed the bars. The metal still bore words and numbers, but they were too faint to read. I remembered how stubborn these gates could be, how they resisted being pulled, how the joints required drops of oil and coaxing. Certain parts black with grease reminded me of bicycles and sewing machines. The motion was harsh, metallic, atonal, if not outright unmusical. Yet the thought of the instrument, the accordion, came suddenly. In Singapore, we never called it that. We had no name. I thought accordion was only my invention, summoned by the rhythm of friction, by the muted music of rust. That early morning the gate did not open.
The form is unmistakable: interlocking flat bars, pivoted and riveted in scissor-fashion, gliding along a rail. Closed, it shields the shop. Opened, it retracts, though rarely neatly. Over time, the alignment slips, the edges catch. If it was one of those with folding panels, it recalled the remote Chinese screens, the ones painted with translucent landscapes. Except here, there were no birds, no rivers, no mountains. Only rust, and the abstraction, the formlessness of time made visible. A kind of gestural mark-making, like in contemporary painting: a meditation on materiality, on texture, on the decay of formalism.
Before seeing it in Spain, I had assumed the gate was a Southeast Asian phenomenon. In truth, it was born in Europe. Known variously as the collapsible gate, scissor gate, concertina grille, or the more lyrical porte accordéon, it appeared in the late 19th century. In Britain, the name was practical, called collapsible gate, as one would expect from the language of manufacturers. Produced in Birmingham, it circulated widely through railway stations, arcades, and colonial shophouses. In France, the name was poetic: porte accordéon, a term that privileged gesture, metaphor, and sound. The British named its function, the French its form. The Southeast Asian shopkeeper, perhaps, had no name for it, only the routine of atonality and tropical fatigue. I thought I had invented the word accordion for it, before learning it was the French name all along.
For me, the accordion gate is not a relic of hipster nostalgia. In Singapore, they’ve all but vanished, except in gentrified corners, where the old façade survives to house pseudo-artisanal coffee at triple the price. At some point, I began to associate it with the gangway accordion between train cars, and then, fleetingly, with a lenticular screen for art or marketing, the kind that shifts as you move past it.
I am more interested in how the accordion mirrors the logic of narrative. Like a story, it can compress into a tight, narrow alley between two blocks, or stretch into a wide, open boulevard. Closed, the story is dense, opaque, pressed tight with meaning. Half-open, the reader peers through, catching glimpses, moving between gaps, fragments, and ellipses, like a slightly torn curtain. Fully drawn back, the plot unfolds, linear and visible, though what was once layered behind is now flattened and veiled in opacity. The accordion allows for expansion, restraint, and silence in the guise of verbosity. This kind of silence is the opposite of the other, the kind that withholds speech in a deliberate, obvious quietness, as loud as any protest shouted out.
And then, halfway through writing this, I glanced at a book I’d set beside me: Una forma más real que la del mundo, a compilation of conversations with the Argentinian writer Juan José Saer. On the cover, a young Saer sits with his right leg crossed over his left, arms resting loosely on his knees. Behind him: an accordion gate, half-visible—was it half-folded? I thought of unspoken sentences today. I hadn’t noticed the gate in the photo before writing this. And I hadn’t written this because of it. But now, the coincidence feels precise, uncanny. And it seems pointless to explain it to myself.
It is late now, and I will close my eyes soon, like all the shop shutters at the end of the day. I’m reminded of European towns where everything closes too early, where streets fall silent too soon, and sleep always comes late for me.
