"A mode of existence" is an account of one of the possible multiple modes of existence created by a surrealist scenario. During COVID-19 related confinement, we had a daily visit of 18 minutes, with intermittent intensity and subtlety. It attributed shape and volume to the physical space and interfered with the perception of real time and lived time. This photographic series illustrates social suspension in a small apartment with access to direct sunlight for this short period of time. It light led us to question the meaning and utility of these restricted bodies, as well as the notions of private and public space. In a way, this suspension describes the moment when individual subjectivities are between two different states of existence, the metaphorical and the effective, as we now are, not knowing what will happen next.