Intimacy in Telematic and Proximal Encounters and Relationships, in Performance and Performative Environments, was an event organised in the framework of the Digital Studios‘ Thursday Club, on 16 March 2006. Click here to see the poster information.

The event looked at the idea of intimacy in performance /performative work, and it explored the nature of intimate encounters both in physical and hybrid spaces.

Intimacy is intertwined with feelings of closeness, trust and familiarity. It is linked with the idea of effective communication among partners in a relationship who feel comfortable with each other, on an emotional and/or physical level. To be intimate with someone, one has to be present. In embodied encounters the notion of presence is evident: present is someone you can perceive with your senses and intellect in proximity to yourself; someone you can look at, talk to, touch; someone who is material, corporeal and tangible in the space/time of the encounter.

In telematic connections though, the idea of presence is not equally straightforward: media theorists such as Allucquère Rosanne Stone, Sherry Turkle and Katherine Hayles have observed that, when it comes to telematic relationships, a paradox occurs: presence ceases to exist as a self-evident quality; it actually ceases to exist as a quality altogether, as it cannot be perceived in a pure state of absolute presence. In such environments, we cannot distinguish between presence or absence; instead we can perceive presence as absence and the reverse. Presence and absence become two sides of the same coin, a molecule impossible to break down: a presence-absence.

The questions we addressed at the Goldsmith’s Thursday Club were:

How is intimacy experienced in telematic, disembodied, performance or performative encounters?

How is intimacy experienced in encounters ‘staged’ or based in proximal, physical, and increasingly mediatized environments?

What constitutes presence and absence in such relationships, and how can these concepts be revisited to fit our mediated and mediatized praxis of cultural performance and everyday life?

How does proximal intimacy differ from telematic intimacy?

How do both states of intimacy inform and redefine one another?

Participants attempted to kick off a discussion through presenting their own thoughts, ideas, obsessions and /or practice; these were:

Key-speaker, Prof. Johannes Birringer (Chair in Drama and Performance Technologies, Brunel University): Underwearing Telematics: On-line Performance and Fashion

Rachel Zerihan, PhD candidate (Performance and Live Art Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University)

and myself, maria x [aka Maria Chatzichristodoulou], PhD candidate (Digital Studios & Drama Department, Goldsmith’s College), Chair.