what are we?

when are we? where are we?

- verify if record is on
- put the timer on 15 min
- close your eyes
- try feeling the others presence, try provoking their presence, find out what is present, where we are ... we
we
- when timer goes off we open our eyes and just watch for a minute, then, whatever ....

we

we

we

we is what?

 

 

Distant Feeling(s) is an online performance series where Daniel Pinheiro in Porto, Annie Abrahams in Montpellier and Lisa Parra in New York experiment “distanced feeling” in an interface that normally is used for videoconferencing. They join in an online séance trying to experience the others presence with their eyes closed and no talking.

Together they try to grasp if and how energy flows between bodies in an online performance where physical presence is absent.

While the performers, during a session, go more and more into a liminal space of 'being together' - perusing the somewhat questionable presence of the other(s) - the audience is invited to observe this silent process of concentration. They are allowed an intimate “regard” on faces slowly reaching a gesture - a still life in motion, of humans wrapped together through the machines.

 

 

Related to a discussion initiated by Annie Abrahams in August 2015:
Would “empathy” be a word to describe what is needed
(put at stake) in networked webcam performances?

Distant Feeling(s) 17min35 Edited video available for projection, installation, exhibition.
Contact landv0dotproject@gmail.com or bramdotorg@gmail.com

 

 

Annie Abrahams, artist and performer, investigates the possibilities and limits of communication under networked conditions. She is known worldwide for her netart and collective writing experiments and is an internationally regarded pioneer of networked performance art. bram.org

Lisa Parra is a choreographer and performer. Her works have been presented in New York at Movement Research, Center for Performance Research, Queens Museum, Glasshouse Project, LUMEN Festival, Triskelion Arts Center, and internationally in Portugal, Spain and Mexico. lanaisnotwool.tumblr.com/

Daniel Pinheiro, performer and visual artist based in Porto, Portugal has been developing work in the field of Telematic Art mostly as a resource to discuss and reflect upon the impact of technology on everyday life. daniel-pinheiro.tumblr.com/

 

 

DistantFeeling(s) has evolved in a yearly online ritual of contemplation on our situation of being together while being separated.

To host the yearly 2024 Distant Feeling(s) session in real space you need a good internet connexion, a computer and a video projector with sound. The projection has to be done on a wall and should be at least three meters large. Sound speakers should be on.
Contact landv0dotproject@gmail.com or bramdotorg@gmail.com

DistantFeeling(s) creates online communality while resisting the speed of daily live and producing uninteresting data for AI robots.
DistantFeeling(s) - an ever-changing re-enactment of our intra-action with machines

 

2023 Yearly iteration
Distant FeelingS #11

Friday, December 15th. 6PM CET.
Duration 15 min.


Can we allow ourselves to dream, collectively, of other possibilities?
Text by Daniel Pinheiro with comments of participants.
Please scroll to the bottom of the page of the link for the text

2022 Yearly iteration
Distant FeelingS #10

Wednesday, Dec 14 18H CET.
Duration 15 min.


Eyes closed and without talking we come together – (re)thinking the conditions of the present moment.



Distant Feeling(s) - Van Gogh TV


12/11 – 05/12 2021, Van Gogh TV Piazza Virtuale, exhibition, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and online. Curator: Tilman Baumgärtel.
Duration 15 min.

2021 Yearly iteration
Distant FeelingS #9

Sunday, Dec 26 18H CET.
Duration 15 min.

On Dec. 30, 2021 Distant Feeling(s) #9 integrated Bjørn Magnhildøen's project Past Convention - a public convention announced after it has already taken place. It deals with time as a convention, a protocol of interaction we have with the world.

17.6 - 16.7.2022, Distant Feelings #9 in Online Affects, Filmexplorer's Video Essay Gallery, Exhibition 2. Curation: Chloé Galibert-Laîné. - Filmexplorer focuses on movies as sources of experience, and not as commodities to be consumed.
Are affects more than just the expression of pure subjectivity? What happens when we do not know how to watch? What do watching experimental films and watching video essays have in common? How should we understand the performance of watching?

 

Distant FeelingS
#onscreen #awayfromscreen

the last confinement activation #7 was on 08/05/2020
16h Paris time (CET)
  15 min online togetherness over distance
Eyes closed, no talking
Open to all.
Please don't be late.


confinement7 08/05/2020
Valentin Godard : Clos, derrière mes paupières, je suis seul et pourtant je cesse d'être seul. Je crois, aveuglé, que nous sommes tous les pierres d'un édifice, dont il existe autant de variations que d'éléments qui le constitue. Pour chaque brique, une nouvelle maison, qui ressemble aux autres, mais pas complétement.
Tout ces écrans, qui nous regardent et nous montrent à nous-mêmes, sont les extrémité d'une toile, dont nous percevons, connectés, la forme qui se dessine. Il m'est impossible, silencieux, d'en partager la géométrie exacte, mais j'imagine que les autres l'imaginent aussi, et alors qu'importe les contours, puisque ensemble nous tissons.
Le temps passe et les fils sont plus ou moins lâches. Selon les secondes, la trame se resserre et nous prend, et d'autre fois s'atténue et me perds. Dans les oreilles, le son nous reli aussi, et puis, soudain, nous réveille.
On remet nos lunettes, comme si les enlever nous avait permis de mieux voir dans le noir. Puis on se revoit et on sourit. On sourit d'un sourire étrange puisqu'on s'adresse (je souris pour, je souris à) et en même temps on partage  (plus que tout, je souris avec).
Un bref instant, un regard collectif qui se confirme et se souvient de ce qu'il vient d'avoir été. Et enfin le thank you qui clos, avec (au moins) les trente mains et les trois cents doigts qui battent l'air, et les pixels infinies qui s'éteignent et les sentiments qui s'éloignent, forts et adoucis de se savoir été rapprochés.

 

intra/rupt/rompre

Every Friday at during confinement
If you want to join you need to install the zoom application on your device.
Free download: https://zoom.us/download#client_4meeting.
The sessions will be recorded; we want to be able to go back to what happened.
Everyone who participated can also ask for the recording - we will happily send it to them.

(ps every Wednesday also sessions Distant Movements open to all)

01/05 2020
"Distant Feeling(s) [commented]", 2019
'integrado no ciclo“fora inverno, já era primavera, o verão seria glorioso” Espaço MIRA, Porto.
Curadoria: José Maia e João Terras.


confinement6 01/05/2020


confinement5 24/04/20
Annie Abrahams: this time it felt like wandering through a sound-space with birds, cars, wind and coughs


confinement4 17/04/20


confinement3 10/04/20

Karla Ptacek: I didn't expect sound from DF My room cool, sunny, peaceful Sound from DF felt... intrusive Where is it coming from? Individual environments, maybe. Probably the artists are experimenting, it is after all, research. I'm falling asleep despite this. Dan wanders in unexpectedly and I wave him away As if something is happening. A sound like an alarm, or a bell is heard.
I open my eyes and put on my glasses to find everyone else is still at it. What to do? Wait? Go back 'under' /'in'/'through.  Vague stab at both. I don't want to be a voyeur Time passes More noise, more sound.
Finally a buzzer is heard.  Some can't tell its the buzzer/alarm/fini. That was my experience from last week and now I see it re enacted.
My room is still cool, sunny peaceful.

Daniel: All the sounds compressed into a noisy texture that allows to feel connected in a crowded room.
Students of Ienke Kastelein - Minerva Groningen: - it was like being on holidays visiting sounds from all over the world - we are not staring at a labtop but at a connexion - it's about giving time to the others
- it is important that we are prepared mentally to do this - it probably won't work with people sceptical about being able to feel something in such a situation.


confinement2 03/04/20

This video has been part of the exhibition APPEARANCE in the UPSTREAM gallery Amsterdam 26 September – 24 October 2020, curation Josephine Bosma.

16:16] P_quod: C'est passé tellement vite !
[16:17] Oelacoacca3921: Je suis encore endormie
[16:17] Oelacoacca3921: ça distord complètement le temps
[16:17] Oelacoacca3921: et l'espace
[16:17] Oelacoacca3921: tout le monde est réuni en une seule voix qui se mélange à mon propre environnement
[16:18] Oelacoacca3921: et c'est vachement à propos de passer du temps ensemble et d'allouer, et de pêter son propre temps
[16:18] Oelacoacca3921: d'échanger du temps
[16:18] P_quod: Oui exactement !
[16:19] P_quod: Je pense que c'est d'autant plus nécessaire aujourdh'ui !
[16:19] Oelacoacca3921: On ne peut pas dire "prendre le temps" de faire ça du coup
[16:19] Oelacoacca3921: mais "prêter le temps de faire ça" ?
[16:19] Oelacoacca3921: de faire *Distant Feelings je veux dire
[16:19] P_quod: hahaha
[16:19] P_quod: Oui ça pourrait marcher !
[16:20] P_quod: Ou passer le temps de faire ça ?
[16:20] Oelacoacca3921: Mais passer le temps ...il t'échappe
[16:20] P_quod: vivre le temps
[16:20] Oelacoacca3921: partager le temps de faire ça
[16:20] Oelacoacca3921: oublier le temps de faire ça ?

it went so fast - I'm still asleep - it completely distorts time - and space - everyone comes together in one voice that mixes with my own environment - it's really about spending time together and allocating, and breaking your own time - exchange time - we can't say "take the time" to do this - but "lend time to do this"? - Or spend time, or pass time - but ...it escapes you - living time - sharing time - forgetting time?


confinement1 27/03/20

 

Distant FeelingS #7

Distant Feeling(s) #7 | December 7th, 6PM GMT+1

Distant Feeling(s) 7th was the third annual activation of the Distant Feeling(s) project, inviting all interested to participate in a shared moment of togetherness across a distance.
Once again we shared time together, online, without speaking and with our eyes closed

After the performance Daniel Pinheiro formulated some interesting thoughts on the project itself since its origin in 2015: https://landproject.tumblr.com/post/189710009054/df7

It is not a proposition for a revolution nor a resolution for an evident relational crisis, it is an experience on connectivity and its fundamentals.


Distant Feeling(s) [commented]

This video is a screencapture of Distant Feeling(s) #6 mounted with a recording of Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow reading a remix of comments. In this remix reactions of participants from previous iterations of Distant Feeling(s) are used to address the multiple aspects of the project.

Comments remix .pdf (made by Daniel Pinheiro and Annnie Abrahams)
With words taken from Muriel Piqué, Zara Rodríguez Prieto, James Cunningham, Camille Bloomfield, Ruth Catlow, Daniel Pinheiro, Annie Abrahams, Lisa Parra, Johannes Birringer, Randall Packer and Nicolaas Schmidt, as well as the participants of the Distant Feelings satelite during the Cie In Vitro Lab.

 

Distant FeelingS #6

Thursday 26/09 18h30, Video Vortex, Valletta, Malta.
Duration 15 min.
Online. Open to all.
Projected in Malta - two onstage participants.
Sound: textcollection of past participant reactions spoken by Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett.

Reactions .pdf Comments afterwards by Lucille Calmel, Max Herman, Agathe Herry, Alice Lenay, Sandra Sarala and Christine Develotte.

 

Distant Feelings satelite.


17th of Mai 2019 An early morning session with the 14 participants of the Cie In Vitro Lab.
Laboratoire de Traverse #11 "Écrans : surfaces de projection et projections de soi. Qu’est-ce que l’écran fait de nous ?", Cie in Vitro/Marine Mane, laboNRV et Les Subsistances Lyon .

 

Distant FeelingS #5

Wednesday December 19th 2018, 9-9:15AM EST (New York time) / 3-3:15PM GMT+1 (Paris time)
Online.
Open to all.

Duration 15min.

Distant Feeling(s) #5, fifth session in a series of online webcam meetings trying to experience each other’s presence eyes closed and no talking.

Distant Feeling(s) #5, the second of a livelong yearly reconnection.
An ever-changing re-enactment of our entanglement with machines.

Short reactions of some participants :
Zara Rodríguez Prieto: …to BE together for 15 min, just BEING
James Cunningham: Just so nice to do nothing with a globally dispersed group of people.
Camille Bloomfield: … all these strangers agree to close their eyes together and show their vulnerabilities to each other, or at least show themselves vulnerable.
Ruth Catlow: Things were louder than people.


Screenrecording of the last 5 min of the connexion https://youtu.be/jiNXjv6UsFo


Screenrecording of the whole event https://vimeo.com/308709859
gallery view


Screenrecording of the whole event by Alix Desaubliaux (participant) https://vimeo.com/308710238
main speaker view - available for projection, installation exhibition.

Three different perspectives on the same event. The first accentuates the moment of the discovery of the community, the diversity of it's participants. The second stresses the duration and the becoming one (group) in the event, and the third allows an intimate and quiet portrait of the individual experience.
None tells you what, how it was. Join us next time!


Distant FeelingS #4

Friday December 1st 2017, 7.30 - 7.45pm Paris time..
Online.
Open to all..

Distant Feeling(s) #4, fourth session in a series of online webcam meetings trying to experience each other’s presence eyes closed and no talking.

Distant Feeling(s) #4, the first of a livelong yearly reconnection.
An ever-changing re-enactment of our intra-action with machines.


Online recording of zoom.


Screen recording
  by Daniel.
Two versions - we don't live exactly the same event.

Daniel Pinheiro wrote after this s�ance:
15 minutes of 'us' being together, (t)here, where? The time between the encounters will happen from now until then what/how will it be? same people? same set up? same software?! The time in between will measure these questions and urgencies that we bring to this moment. Maybe in the future 15 minutes won't be enough. Maybe too much? 15 minutes against the everyday digital restlessness, building a sensorial invisible fabric that gathers who's participating (and who's not?!), resiliently coming back to this shared moment, with the same faces or others, other possibilities of promoting a silent and blind encounter across each other in an electronic communion. Will it be 'us' again?! 

 

Distant FeelingS #3

Thursday 24 Nov. 2016
6.30 pm London time, 19h30 Paris time.
Duration 15 min.

VisionS in the Nunnery Programme Launch
Curated by Tessa Garland and Cinzia Cremona
The Nunnery, 181 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ. )

Lisa Parra in New York, USA,
Daniel Pinheiro in Porto, Portugal
Annie Abrahams in Montpellier, France
will gather in an online séance trying to experience each other’s presence.

How does it feel to share an interface with eyes closed and no talking?

Anyone could participate in this digital mindfulness experiment.
Download the zoom.us application - desktop or other devices -
and “Join meeting” ID = 630407193 at the right time.


Recording of the session at the Nunnery. A telematic embrace?

It was about acknowledging that system, that fabric, the technological nervous system that became present through the silence of those participating.
Reactions by Daniel, Lisa, Annie, Randall Packer, Johannes Birringer, Nicolaas Schmidt and Ruth Catlow published on Landproject by Daniel Pinheiro.

I was waiting for silence to fall, after the chatter. when it occured, there was no embrace. but a faint sensation of sharing a silent small reprieve, over the constant noise and anger of the world, but an alonesilence as one could not see the others. it is the strangest experience, to be alonesilentblind with assumed others somewhere out there. Johannes Birringer

Like your work The Kiss, or Paul Sermon's telematic pieces, the sensation of intimacy is never "real," it is based on the willingness to believe and to allow closeness to become "real" despite separation. For those who participated in this experiment, it was exactly that: the willingness to suspend one's belief in the knowledge of the virtual proximity and connectiveness of the others. It is that knowledge that can can be convincing enough to suspend disbelief and thus be silently wrapped in the telematic embrace. This work is a great model for how we might conduct ourselves on the Internet. Randall Packer

hanging out with friends... Nicolaas Schmidt

liminal space – pure motion – an intimate regard – a field of light – dissolved, destabilized – an altered state – a telematic embrace – a silent small reprieve – hanging out with friends – machines conversing across the network only when the noisy humans finally shut up - an organic acceptance of silence?
An organic acceptance of silence : More reflexions 2017.


Distant Feeling(s) #1 - raw

Daniel Pinheiro in Porto, Annie Abrahams in Montpellier and Lisa Parra in New York spend 15 min of distanced feeling together. 4 March 2016.
Experience the others presence online with eyes closed. (no talking)

 

Meeting Lisa and Daniel.
Yes we met. In space. Where? In my body maybe?
I was trying to much. Maybe. Why did I look more up than down? Was there, where we were, more up in the sky than here down? I was imagining I might be able to provoke an action, a telematic coordination of movement. It didn't happen. Slowly I went from the outside to the inside. I was with them on the floor of Lisa's dance studio. I could feel them. Bullshit of course. There was nothing to say when we opened our eyes.
I would like to do it again, I would like to see what would happen a second time.
Was Lisa crying near the end?

“I did cry.
I too was imaging myself lying on the floor. it was an inner journey of images, desires, dreams, feelings of sadness and happiness
it was special, it was a special moment in time.” - Lisa Parra

“It made me think of meeting strangers inside an elevator that gets stucked. Where my mind traveled many places trying to understand where was I in relation to these other two persons. Were they there still?! The urge to open my eyes was suddenly erased by the warmth of the sun in my face… here… and back to them … there.

it constantly made me feel that I was there because they were also there, suddenly instead of facing them it was about these three silent bodies “looking” at something else. 

the intimate space of silence is awkward. the absence of time and space is endless and infinite” - Daniel Pinheiro

 

Distant Feeling(s) #2

Lisa Parra in Los Angeles USA
Daniel Pinheiro in Lisabon Portugal
Annie Abrahams in Montpellier France
gathered again in an online séance to try to experience each other’s presence with closed eyes.
Duration 30 min. + discussion afterwards.

The encounter was livestreamed directly to reSense #1
reSense [movement, performance, technology, art] Festival
curated by Byrke Lou and Marcello Lussana
26 of July 2016 21h45
SPEKTRUM - art science community
Bürknerstraße 1
12047 Berlin
Thanks to Olivia Jack (artist and webrtc developer)

When meeting online we face a lack of references that usually define the perception of ‘being’ somewhere at a given time. This object aims at discussing, within the possibilities of networked performance, the mediation itself by removing the fundamental sense that allows connectedness to happen. In a mainly visual rationalized culture we question the following: what are we then left with?

With a sense of proximity ? Intentions of provoking a telematic coordination of movements diluted into a journey of each individual approach on experiencing a shared moment in time? What time?

distant feeling(s) #2
More images on flickr.
Video of the séance on youtube

We felt lonely, not connected, we became unsettled, I started talking - we have to do it again, we have to try again.
 
"The audience, present at Spektrum wondered about a score, a set of interconnected predetermined actions when, in fact, while unaware of them (of who, how many they were) we acknowledged their presence while "searching" for eachother. In&out of the rules, "doing" in order to be active, waiting for the right amount of time that would signal this shared moment, we were left (maybe) individually transitioning between our locations and the venue with the audience more than just with ourselves together."
- Daniel Pinheiro.

"My experience in this performance was not one of nervousness or feeling lost like you both felt. Rather, I felt very present and connected to you both and to those watching-- I felt/heard your nervousness and unsettling movements, which for me was like trying to solve a problem. The problem being the chaos, and settling in with that." -
Lisa Parra.


Lisa and Annie sharing a blind moment during their first online meeting in Oct 2015.

*

 

online séances
After collaborating with Lisa and Daniel in their LAND PROJECT: Placelessness (October, 2015) we decided to continue to experiment "distanced feeling" all three together in a new project called Distant Feeling(s).