scholarly journals Face to Facelessness: Imagined Intimacies and Socially Distant Desires

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Fossey

This paper revisits a performance titled Falling in Love Again - and Again which was first performed in 2014 as part of a series of works I created questioning relational intimacy and proximity in public space. During Falling in Love Again - and Again participants were invited to explore public space with the intention of anonymously falling in love with strangers. The details of these encounters were shared with me as the leader of the piece via mobile phone text messages, but never with the subjects of the participants' desires.  Understanding the dynamics of intimacy and proximity in 2014 was a very different experience to how I understand them in 2021. The Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing, and two periods of lockdown has drastically influenced how relationality and physically being in the world with others is performed.  This paper is concerned both with the intimate and proximate dynamics of relational bodies during that performance as I understood it then, and, as a consequence, how we might understand relational proximity and intimacy now.Critical points of departure for the paper include art historian Grant Kester's writing on conversational art practices and his framing of dialogic encounters through the use of Jeffrey T. Nealon's Alterity Politics: Ethics and Performative Subjectivity (1998).  Models of 'dialogical' experience and 'responsibility', as situated by Mikhail Bakhtin and Emmanuel Levinas respectively (Nealon, 1998, cited in Kester, 2004, 118) are used in this article to frame a rethinking of the dynamics and ethics of face to face contact and physical proximity, as bodies in space maintain distance from one another, connected only by our digital devices and our imaginations.  The voyeuristic practices of Sophie Calle and Vito Acconci converge with theatre makers Forced Entertainment's 'writing over' of place (Kaye, 2000) to explore imaginary relational connectivity.  The writing of geographer Doreen Massey supports this framing through the use of Massey's thoughts on the fictional poetics of social interactions and 'stories so far' (Massey, 2005).  Ultimately the paper asks what happens when we are required to imagine being with others in physically distant and imaginary ways with only our mobile devices as depositories for our fictional desires. 

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 702-731 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Lila Steinberg

A key feature of the Occupy movement has been the General Assembly (GA), in which participants, gathered in outdoor public space, engaged in emergent forms of direct deliberative democratic practice. GAs created opportunities for renewed, co-constructed discourses about human rights, collectivity and autonomy, and the nature of fairness. The physical, durative occupation of public space and establishment of encampments enabled participants to converse and collaborate meaningfully about these matters and their implications for action. An attested ideology of horizontalism was produced and reflected in practices of decision-making within a direct participatory democratic framework. The generation of local intersubjectivity and global solidarity as well as the embodied augmentation of personal and group agency were lodged within face-to-face interactions at Occupy GAs. Participants developed and adapted specific embodied tools for assembly use, including hand signals and the human mic, to facilitate a discursive praxis of egalitarianism within the context of a speech exchange system suited to a large outdoor deliberative body. These practices are central to the Occupy movement, as they constitute the discursive experiments in direct democracy set in motion by a shared recognition of social crisis and systemic injustice felt increasingly around the world. This paper examines how several embodied practices at Occupy Los Angeles attend to participants’ attested ideologies and the practical problems of open, large-group direct democracy.


Author(s):  
William N. West

The face-to-face encounter is a figure for direct, immediate contact between two entities. It has a long history, from Paul’s assertion that what he sees now in a glass darkly he will some day meet face to face to Emmanuel Levinas’ attempt to refound philosophy as based on its confrontation with another. But in seeking to determine the conditions under which the face to face could take place—absolute transparency to the absolutely other—its writers have risked stripping it of the contingencies and particularities that actually mark face-to-face encounters in the world. They have accidentally rendered it as theory and as theophany. Theatrical performance shows another view of the face to face, restoring to it the confusions and quirks of the world, embracing the dark glass of Paul’s wordly speculation rather than the promise of a more perfect vision always still to come. By executing the clarities that are hoped for in the face-to-face encounter, theater shows its shortcomings and discovers in them unhoped for points of contact.


2016 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 295-318
Author(s):  
Anna Bergqvist

AbstractMuseums establish specific contexts, framings, which distinguish them from viewing the world face-to-face. One striking aspect of exhibition in so-called participatory museums is that it echoes and transforms the limits of its own frame as a public space. I argue that it is a mistake to think of the meaning of an exhibit as either determined by the individual viewer's narrative or as determined by the conception as presented in the museum's ‘authoritative’ narrative. Instead I deploy the concept of a model of comparison to illuminate the philosophical significance of perspective in understanding the idea of objectivity in museum narratives.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (26) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adna Candido de Paula ◽  
Cristine Gorski Severo

RESUMO: Esteartigo tem po robjetivo apresentar, de maneira interdisciplinar, reflexões acerca da relação entre espaço público e linguagens. Trata-se de abordar o tema a partir: (i) das noções bakhtinianas de enunciado, significação, mundo da vida, mundo da cultura, responsabilidade e ética; (ii) das concepções ricoeurianas de atos de fala, de configuração do mundo habitável, dadupla estrutura da identidade, enquanto idem e ipse, da relação entre identidade e alteridade e da dimensão ética das narrativas ficcionais. Algumas dessas noções são aproximadas às definições de Arendt acerca do espaço público e do papel do discurso e da ação nesta esfera. Finalizando, o conceito de espaço público possibilita a discussão de uma certa concepção de ética, vinculada à relação (dialógica) dos sujeitos com a alteridade. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: discurso, espaço-público, linguagens, ética. ABSTRACT: This article aims at presenting, in an interdisciplinary way, reflections on the relation between the public space and languages. For this purpose,we shall discuss the following topics: (i) fromBakhtin’sperspective, the notions of: utterance, meaning, the world of life, the world of culture, responsibility and ethics; (ii) from Ricqueur’s perspective, conceptions of: speech acts, the configuration of the habitable world, the double structure of the identity – as idem and ipse –, the relation between self identity and otherness, and the ethical dimension in fictional narratives. Some of these notions are related to Arendt’s definitions of the public sphere and the role of discourse and action in this sphere. To conclude, the notion of public space leads us to a discussion of a certain conception of ethics connected to the (dialogic) subject-other relations. KEYWORDS: discourse, public space, languages, ethics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2 (29)) ◽  
pp. 91-105
Author(s):  
Ruža Jeličić

The fruits of the digital age have become a key part of everyday life in hundreds of millions of households, offices and schools around the world. Our communication takes place far more via text messages and e-mail than face-to-face, and the first place we look for information is Google. The consequences of this technological ubiquity and electronic flood are significant shifts in the attitudes as well as in the behavior of students and teachers, and the goal of this paper is to examine these shifts. How is the digital age changing the opportunities, values and lives of students and teachers - what is happening now, what awaits us in the future? Can digital achievement really change the way students and teachers think or behave? Do both students and teachers learn a new alphabet - the digital alphabet?


2021 ◽  
pp. postgradmedj-2021-140330
Author(s):  
Jean Mei Ching Leong ◽  
Wee Leon Lam ◽  
Shi Zhuan Tan ◽  
Chye Yew Ng

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed forever the way we do certain things. Although the race for a cure and vaccine has taken centre stage, traditional face-to-face medical education has slowly metamorphosised in the background to a virtual world with innumerable webinars, virtual tutorials and lectures in the World Wide Web. Despite this seemingly ‘perfect’ solution, there remains a hidden cost. Educators are forced to learn new skills to engage students as well as manipulate the electronic platform. Impact on learning for students, both undergraduate and postgraduate from a lack of social interactions, remains unknown. In this article, the authors share their experiences from different specialities about the pros and cons of virtual learning and teaching. Suggestions and practical tips are offered to enhance the learning experience. More emphasis may need to be placed on the creation of learning communities rather than lecture-based curricula. Hybrid curricula or conferences may become the future norm. As we slowly move out of lockdown into a changed world and new ways of doing things, lessons learnt can be harnessed for future hybrid models that can combine the best of technology and physical teaching to reduce worldwide inequalities.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-41
Author(s):  
Jacques Lezra

Humanism returns for the New Materialism in ‘nonhuman’ form as matter. New ‘matter’ and new materialism thus fashion the world to human advantage in the gesture of abjecting us. They commit us to the humanism of masochists. They offer an animistic and paradisiacal realm of immediate transactions, human to human, human to and with nonhuman, face to face, world without end. The impulse is tactically and strategically useful. But ‘matter’ will not help us if we fashion it so that it bears in its concept the signature of a human hand in its making. Can we do otherwise? Only by conceiving matter as what absolutizes what is not-one: matter from which no discipline will normally, normatively, produce an object or take its concept; on which heroical abjection will founder; matter non-human in ways the human animal can neither designate, nor ever count.


Screen Bodies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Lara Bochmann ◽  
Erin Hampson

This article is a theoretical, audiovisual, and personal exploration of being a trans and non-binary person and the challenges this position produces at the moment of entering the outside world. Getting ready to enter public space is a seemingly mundane everyday task. However, in the context of a world that continuously fails or refuses to recognize trans and non-binary people, the literal act of stepping outside can mean to move from a figurative state of self-determination to one of imposition. We produced a short film project called Step Out to delve into issues of vulnerability and recognition that surface throughout experiences of crossing the threshold into public space. It explores the acts performed as preparation to face the world, and invokes the emotions this can conquer in trans and non-binary people. Breathing is the leading metaphor in the film, indicating existence and resistance simultaneously. The article concludes with a discussion of affective states and considers them, along with failed recognition, through the lens of Lauren Berlant’s concept of “cruel optimism.”


Author(s):  
Ward Keeler

Looking at Buddhist monasteries as social institutions, this book integrates a thorough description of one such monastery with a wide-ranging study of Burmese social relations, both religious and lay, looking particularly at the matter of gender. Hierarchical assumptions inform all such relations, and higher status implies a person’s greater autonomy. A monk is particularly idealized because he exemplifies the Buddhist ideal of “detachment” and so autonomy. A male head of household represents another masculine ideal, if a somewhat less prestigious one. He enjoys greater autonomy than other members of the household yet remains entangled in the world. Women and trans women are thought to be more invested in attachment than autonomy and are expected to subordinate themselves to men and monks as a result. But everyone must concern themselves with the matter of relative status in all of their interactions. This makes face-to-face encounter fraught. Several chapters detail the ways that individuals try to stave off the risks that interaction necessarily entails. One stratagem is to subordinate oneself to nodes of power, but this runs counter to efforts to demonstrate one’s autonomy. Another is to foster detachment, most dramatically in the practice of meditation.


Author(s):  
Jean-Yves Lacoste ◽  
Oliver O’Donovan

Giving and promise must be thought together. Being-in-the world entails being-with the other, who is both “given” and bearer of a gift promised. But any disclosure may be understood as a gift; it is not anthropomorphic to speak of “self-giving” with a wider reference than person-to-person disclosure. Which implies that no act of giving can exhaust itself in its gift. Present experience never brings closure to self-revealing. Yet giving is crystallized into “the given,” the closure of gift. “The given” is what it is, needing no gift-event to reveal it. But the given, too, is precarious, and can be destabilized when giving brings us face to face with something unfamiliar. Nothing appears without a promise of further appearances, and God himself can never be “given.”


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