hermannheisig.net

When does something feel close or intimate? Does intimacy necessarily mean being near to each other? When does something appear to be extremely far away and untouchable? What’s the relation between distance and intensity?

Next to Near is a guided journey, a body-scape, an exploration into the relationship between proximity and distance. Two performers, three musicians, 60 audience members and various objects, all share one physical space that becomes their playground. The performers serve both as “space facilitators”: re-organizing, transforming and shifting the conditions in the space, as well as reference points one could relate to.

Inspired by the concept of Psychogeography, developed by Guy Debord and the Situationist International movement in the 1960’s, Next to Near investigates precisely this double meaning of geographical terms that is provoked in the piece. On the one hand, nearness and distance can be defined as purely geographical parameters. On the other hand, they also describe a mental position – a feeling towards a place, a person or an object of reference.

In a world in which a feeling of familiarity or strangeness is no longer a question of geographical distance, Next to Near reflects a changed, unstable attitude towards one’s physical position and location, suggesting fantasy and play as a possible process.