A collaborative project between Lisa Parra (USA) and Daniel Pinheiro (Portugal) for developing methods for creating live performative work using telecommunication technologies.
Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro began their collaboration in 2013, exploring possibilities for “moving” together at a distance using videoconferencing to establish a shared space for intervention. Their research has developed in different formats of execution that mainly focus on a shared sense of presence. For this version of LAND Project, they will connect remotely to construct a shared space using João Fiadeiro’s real-time composition practice. Parra will perform live in New York. Pinheiro will join via livestream, via LiveLab, from Porto, Portugal.
In _______________nosespaçosescrevemosonossocorpo, the actions transform the space where the invisible and visible presence of the other creates a togetherness stream of consciousness.
For its showing at Performance Mix Festival (New Dance Alliance, New York) [June, 10th, 2021] both artists continued their encounters practice to inform an idea of continuity across the distance, which materializes in layers of presence in the space in New York and a mediation of (an)other presence from an intimate and secluded space in Porto, Portugal. In this communicative structure they continue a methodology in which the disembodiment provoked by the digital is transformed into artifacts that behold an overall idea of participatory distance. Practicing the digital system in alternative ways has resulted in a performance-based research constituted by several examples which also deal with the specificities of audio and video in real-time in the process of mediation.
This performance had the participation and collaboration of Kathryn Butler.
Distant Feeling(s) 7th, activated on December 7th, 2019, 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.
Using the internet’s potential of connectivity as a means to reflect on the constraints and limitations of that precise quality, DF has become (since its first iteration in 2015*) a participatory event in which through silence and provoking an inwards movement by the closing of the eyes while connected, which aims to highlight the relational aspect that is (supposedly) intrinsic to the idea of network. Throughout its various activations, from a closed environment between the artists Annie Abrahams, Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro – where the main focus was to attempt sensing the existence and presence of the others while being physically distant, without speaking and with eyes closed – to it becoming a practice shared with an audience, and transforming into an open event since 2017, the project has addressed, cumulatively, the characteristics of the medium/infrastructure to reflect upon them, producing an archive of documentation of the various moments where each one and all work as a visual metaphor of the condition(ing) of connectivity as it is installed in our lives.
A silent, yet sentient, relational encounter, materialized as a telematic embrace where nothing seems to happen and where the lack of apparent action has transformed into the transposition of the concept of agency and a potential way for fighting alienation.
In the more recent activations of the project, a common fact has been the awareness of how machines and the surrounding environments from the different remote locations become present* while the bodies perform a sort of absentia while electricity powers this moment of communion. Where and how are we (always) while the network is functioning?
As it continues to develop, iteration after iteration, whether it is through the annual re-activations or in specific contexts it becomes clear that it is a form of researching togetherness through the internet as a way to counter its fallacy, the promise of a interconnected world where concepts of time and physical space dissipate** (an ubiquitous spatio-temporal unity), which in fact drives today the (im)possibility of collective strength/power. It is a provocation to the role of networked conversations as a practice for activism emptied from specific purpose, again, assuming the role of symbolizing a situation of engaging in different possibilities of triggering collective agency.
Can we find novelty in an already established system, and act from within, towards (an)other purpose(s)?
Distant Feeling(s) highlights in its genesis and continuity the need to feel/sense presence and suggests a pragmatical approach for reshaping a consciousness on kinship resorting to available technological tools which have been transforming its meaning.
“Silence is hard to find…” Camille Renarhd mentions at the end of DF#7 and it is through this quest for silence where machines, responsible for allowing the connection across a distance, “speak” louder and the contemporary restlessness is confronted in this model of interaction between humans and machines. 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.
The relational revolution is already far along.
At the same time, it is clearly in crisis. – Time Reborn p. xxix
Distant Feeling(s) is a project initiated by Annie Abrahams, Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro
Participants of Distant Feeling(s) #7: Camille Renarhd, Daniel Pinheiro, Muriel Piqué, Annie Abrahams, Bérénice Belpaire, Nicolaas Schmidt, Christine Develotte, Sandra Sarala, Alan Sondheim, Paul Hughes, Nerina Cocchi, Frans Van Lent, Ariane Cassimiro, Frédérique Santune, Camille Bloomfield, Jonathan Chomko, Csenge Kolozsvári, Sabrina Kwong, Ienke Kastelein, Molly Hankwitz, David Cox
Merci pour cela Annie, pour ce miroir que tu nous tends vers nous-même, en plus de nous ouvrir des fenêtres et des portes vers les autres. - Agathe Herry (online participant of Distant Feeling(s) #6) - more reactions here
In Distant Feeling(s) #6 once again a space was activated - a space which opens from different locations into an online communicative interface where the participants rest for 15 minutes with eyes closed aware of their individual presence aligned (in time) with others.
This iteration of Distant Feeling(s) is mounted with the recording of a remix of comments - a text containing the key elements which previous participants made note of after entering this space.
As a moment of suspension the project takes the form of a possible meditative process on our situation while being constantly overflowed with electronic acceleration; in this specific case it was performed to a live audience in Malta as part of Video Vortex #12 on September 26 (2019), the event itself being one concerned with the aesthetics and politics of online video.
A telematic embrace where nothing seems to happen and where the lack of action is precisely its potential as an agency tool towards fighting alienation and perform a possible form of absentia within the network, while the network is in function. So highlighting presence and togetherness as main aspects of social interaction only possible when refraining the imposed ubiquitous spatio-temporal unity that is imposed by technology.
Distant Feeling(s) is a project by Annie Abrahams ( @e-stranger), Lisa Parra ( @lisaparra) and Daniel Pinheiro ( @daniel-pinheiro)
[full] video documentation of “Mediated Motion / LAND PROJECT” (raw edit)
Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro
Performance showing on April 26, 2019
Invited to perform at Festival DDD (Dias da Dança), dance festival in Portugal on April 26 2019, thanks to the invitation of Flávio Rodrigues (artist and curator of DDD OUT*), LAND PROJECT continued to be developed, between February and April in different encounters exploring the concept and notion of "mediated motion" as a form to investigate possibilities of common action at a distance. The encounter aimed, through its development, at exploring possibilities of uniting the remote spaces/locations – Casa da Arquitectura (Matosinhos, Portugal) and LaMaMa Rehearsal Studios (New York, US) – and connecting the outdoors/public space ( @daniel-pinheiro) with the indoors/intimate space ( @lisaparra ) {an idea to be developed further into the future}.
While exploring the concept of (re)-mediation, the setup where the performance took place in Portugal and where audience was expected to be present was structured so that the spectator could choose from which perspective to watch the live interaction and some artifacts, such as materials tested for video projection purposes and a playlist of the previous encounters/rehearsals leading to this presentation.
*DDD OUT is a section of the festival, coordinated by Balleteatro which curates dance works to be performed in the public space.
On Wednesday, December 19th 2018 [between 2 and 2.15PM UTC], Distant Feeling(s) was activated - again, for the second time - as a participatory online happening, bringing together the artists and participants, all connecting from different remote locations through the use of the videoconferencing platform zoom.us.
Initially started as part of Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro’s collaboration in LAND PROJECT, the project grew into an a specific model of interaction between the three artists involved and has been presented in different formats and contexts. Even if it can be activated outside of its yearly iteration - Distant Feeling(s) is a project which aims at, (least) once a year, bringing together different interested people, joining from their different locations in the world and share ‘15 minutes’ of togetherness across the network. Resorting to the internet as a common communication channel/medium and to video-conferencing software, everyone is invited to join and remain silent and with eyes closed during the duration of the experiment.
For this specific iteration, three different perspectives on the project emerged due to different modes of archiving/documenting the experience:
The last five minutes (editing by Annie Abrahams)
Distant Feeling(s) Gallery View
Distant Feeling(s) (recording by Alix Desaubliaux)
When the usual human tools used for communication - sound and vision, commonly applied in video-conferencing - are taken out from the equation while going against everyday (technological) restlessness and enabling other senses to carefully tune into the presence of others, Distant Feeling(s) becomes an intimate portrait of people actively producing a meditative state where the screen becomes a shared and common space for all. A globally dispersed community materializing a relational system, a networked topology that not only represents the network itself, but that discusses the fragile situation of us being together while apart.
Distant Feeling(s) #5: the fifth session of Distant Feeling(s) - the second of an online ritual of contemplation, a yearly reconnection reflecting on our situation of being together while separated.
Distant Feeling(s) is a project by Annie Abrahams ( @e-stranger), Lisa Parra ( @parralis) and Daniel Pinheiro ( @daniel-pinheiro ) - a series of online webcam meetings trying to experience each other’s presence with EYES CLOSED and NO TALKING.
info also at bram.org/distantF/
dedicated page at http://landproject.tumblr.com/distantfeelings
space(s) is another encounter between Lisa Parra ( @parralis ) and Daniel Pinheiro ( @daniel-pinheiro ) exploring the possibilities of the networked environment.
Space is a practiced place. Thus the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers. In the same way, an act of reading is a space produced by the practice of a particular place: a written text, i.e.: a place constituted by a system of signs. - Michel De Certeau
(De Certeau, 'The Practice of Everyday Life', 117, quoted in Kaye, 'Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation, 4; quoted in Steve Dixon's 'Digital Performance - A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation', 411)
In the darkness,
We move forward,
in an unknown territory,
a territory devoid of references,
without meaning.
As we move ahead,
as we go through the surface,
through the edges,
as we follow the contours,
we intersect shapes and elements.
In that space,
it becomes...
impossible to perceive what we intersect.
We resort to memory,
to reproduce what we think
we are in fact intersecting.
We resort to memory,
of things we already know,
so we can name the things,
and make that space,
somehow recognizable.
In that space,
where distance is impossible to measure,
we try...
that opacity becomes lesser...
where are you when you're not here?!
- Placelessness, 2015; LAND PROJECT
As the place - space - is built by a relationship of coexistence; remote places become a single distributed continuous area expanded through a networked system of communication - the specificity of this place [site-specific] is a consequence of what happens within it. The personal sense of position, in regard to common referentials, is disrupted by fracturing the distance between (at least) two physical locations. This perception is an altered state caused by a sensorial experience of practicing this new multi-location extended placelessness inhabited by actions that, through light, gradually unveil a unified mixed reality.
By playing with the possibility offered by darkness and with light, the doubled space is demarcated by the actions developed, its liminality allows for a careful disorientation of participants inviting them to ‘enter’ each other’s distinct location and compose a representation of what’s being simultaneously constructed.
The body finds itself in the middle of this ambiguity, no longer claiming a singular identity but possibly assuming the other as an extension of its own. These ambiguous bodies are constantly in a state of becoming, a transdividual exchange that is a writing of this space, only tangible through its embodiment – its practice, constituting an archetypal system.
Through the screen, both the sense of presence (body) and space (place), within networked environments are exerted to the extent that they undermine traditional preconceptions of their significance. This non-place is a constant transitory state between the physical and the immateriality of its augmentation; inhabited by its agents/actors it becomes a site-specific where both the perception of location and self are shared between them, a communicant place where one end is not a copy of the other, where both are real and coexist in the same time – this one limited to the length of its duration – an area of action, liberated from normative constraints.
Distant Feeling(s) #4 - Friday December 1st 2017, 7.30 - 7.45PM (GMT+1). Online. Eyes Closed. No talking. Open to all.
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?!
[online recording of zoom meeting here]
[screen recording of Daniel’s desktop here]
Distant Feeling(s) #4 is the fourth session in a series of online webcam meetings trying to experience each other’s presence eyes closed and no talking.
An online ritual of contemplation on our situation of being together while being separated.
by Lisa Parra @parralis , Annie Abrahams @e-stranger , Daniel Pinheiro @daniel-pinheiro
info also at bram.org/distantF/
dedicated page at landproject.tumblr.com/distantfeelings
Join us for the fourth session of Distant Feeling(s), a project by Lisa Parra @parralis, Annie Abrahams @e-stranger and Daniel Pinheiro @daniel-pinheiro. A series of online webcam meetings trying to experience each other’s presence - eyes closed and no talking.
This session marks the first of a commitment to a yearly reconnection where we invite others to join, online, and be part of this online ritual of contemplation on our situation of being together while being separated. An ever-changing re-enactment of our intra-action with machines.
Friday December 1st 2017, 7.30 - 7.45PM (GMT+1) - find your time here. Online. Open to all.
If you want to join us, you need to install the zoom application on your computer or cell phone and connect at 7.25PM (GMT+1) to the meeting number 3210554238. (https://zoom.us/j/3210554238)
Hosted by the 9to5.tv project (Atlanta, Georgia - US), node--body is a live networked movement choir. Based on the choreographic model of Rudolf Laban’s movement choirs a mesh network is created, through an online platform and, by the dancers joining in from remote locations, exchanging movement information between them and resulting on a visual landscape where patterns emerge from a continuous communication.
A project by Lisa Parra, Olivia Jack and Daniel Pinheiro
With Emma Rose Brown, Juana del Mar and Isabel Costa
Locations: New York (US), Bogotá (Colombia), Porto (Portugal), Atlanta, Georgia (US)
9to5 is a month-long art exhibition in Atlanta that dissolves the boundary between artist and audience by way of an experimental live streams.
Will you dance with me?! (2017) [Porto, Portugal - Berlin, Germany]
2017.02.17 – Vorspiel Transmediale 2017 organized by Flee Immediately! (in collaboration with Joana Chicau) at Panke Gallery
Telematic experience using videoconferencing online tools and broadcasting software, this work addresses (and continues) the possibilities investigated over the course of three years, along with artist Lisa Parra, in LAND PROJECT.
This first experiment that took place at Transmediale Vorspiel 2017 intended testing computer performance and audience reaction towards the development of a durational experience.
Photo by Franco Dubini
Following the work developed within LAND PROJECT and more specifically the practice of combining two remote locations in the same frame, the main purpose is to perceive the computer screen as the intersection point where remote bodies find ways to engage in a dance/movement together, experimenting on adjusting one's position, location and sense of presence while physically separated.
One-on-one participants are invited to dance lonesomeness together to the sound of a version of Elvis Presley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight”.
Also interested on starting to address the subject of distributed location of the self this work is also included on Daniel Pinheiro’s project TRANSCODING - a series of works dedicated to explore the internet, its affections, and representations of human agency in a multiplied, transitory and fractalized nature.
More on the event:
This experiment was possible through the invitation of Joana Chicau – Media designer, researcher and performer – to be part of the program developed by Flee Immediately! for Vorspiel Transmediale 2017, presenting a series of workshops and performances at Panke exploring and experimenting with choreographic relations and code, from bodies of code to actual bodies, from digital deviations to physical ones. The event series was part of a larger collaboration and research around the relationships between dance, bodies, and code that began in Flee Immediately! issue 02.
For the development:
Technical details:
- [Remote Country]: computer, webcam*, internet connection, zoom.us (software installed), sound speakers on, video projector.
- [Country of origin]: computer, webcam, internet connection, zoom.us (software installed), second monitor, OBS (open broadcaster software),
*the webcam (in-built or usb) should be facing an empty space with a chair (like in the image), preferably white, empty space / The video projection should be opposite to where the participant is standing in order to view in a larger image the combination of the two feeds.
Instructions:
Each participant is invited to seat on the chair and "dance" remotely with the artist(s). The sound cues will inform the participants and the artist(s) will be waiting for the next one. The performance will run for 1hour.
Links:
Joana Chicau – Media designer, researcher and performer:
How does it feel to share an interface with eyes closed and no talking?
I felt light, as if I were in a field of light, changing, living light, not with human beings, and probably because that frightened me I tried to visualize you both, to imagine, how, where you were, I tried to make something I could understand of what I felt. As if you were familiar to me - I never met you, but still, apparently you became reassuring, close. (…) Dissolved I felt. Maybe even empty. Certainly destabilized. – Annie Abrahams @e-stranger
This is where I feel that this is not about being mindful, or meditating and rather about sensing and embodying and being present. And in this state of being present we may feel connected to others or we may not-- if we are not, then what happens in that isolation? – Lisa Parra @parralis
The "silence" gave space to the sounds of animals, objects and machines. Close to the end I felt that had actually entered the space that us three were sharing together with others. (…) By closing our eyes we're stripped to just 'being', following the rules of not speaking and not looking we are left in a place of communitary lonesomeness that continues to define our everyday world of infinite information and surveillance. – Daniel Pinheiro @daniel-pinheiro
Distant Feeling(s) #3 is part of the encounters between Annie Abrahams, Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro. The 15minutes experiment took place online and was exhibited as part of Visions in the Nunnery. Participants were invited to join either at The Nunnery gallery (London) or remotely using the conference meeting software zoom.us.
As the world grows into a larger networked system, allowing ourselves to share a moment of intimacy with strangers is becoming less probable as we find ourselves immersed in a culture where the sense of time is shifting towards an invisible fastness. It was about acknowledging that system, that fabric, the technological nervous system that became present through the silence of those participating.
Being in space means to establish diverse relationships with the things that surround our bodies. - Deleuze
As distributed digital entities we become part of an intertwined body that is whole by combining different parts of our extended selves. Telematic culture means, in short, that we do not think, see, or feel in isolation (Roy Ascott) and therefore this electronic communion is built out of the relationships that are established when we are ‘together’ and this ‘togetherness’ comes out of a suspension of disbelief*, that in this digital sphere can be the capacity extending proprioception itself – the way that we recognize and position ourselves within this context.
Distant FeelingS #3 - VisionS in the Nunnery - Oct5-Dec18 2016 (Thursday, November 24th - 6h30pm (GMT) (view the full programme here)
For this 3rd online encounter between the three artists, Distant Feeling(s) - curated by Tessa Garland and Cinzia Cremona for the programme at the Nunnery Gallery (London, UK) - the main question remains:
How does it feel to share an interface with eyes closed and no talking?
A moment of digital mindfulness, a moment to experience the relational tissue that networked environments (expanded to several layers of our common daily routines) provide. By using an interface that relies on senses activated by audio and video in order to establish communication we take a moment to explore the possibilities beyond using those same senses, this time by opening the possibility for others to join.
Annie Abrahams (FR), Lisa Parra (US), Daniel Pinheiro (PT) + possible participants at the gallery + online participants
The piece presented by Annie Abrahams (Distant Feeling(s) #1) continues the research of an artist who challenges the relational utopias attributed to the internet by creating performances which reveal empty yet precious moments, and the banality of interpersonal relations. The performance links Abrahams to two other artists (Daniel Pinheiro & Lisa Parra); from three different locations the three seek to communicate sensations and emotions. Cinzia Cremona (one of the curators) in ARSHAKE Oct. 3 2016.
The link to join the zoom.us meeting dedicated to this event will be shared soon.
(Download the application - desktop or other devices - and “Join meeting” ID = 630407193: https://zoom.us/j/630407193 at the right time.)
Distant FeelingS #3 - VisionS in the Nunnery - Oct5-Dec18 2016 (Thursday, November 24th - 6h30pm (GMT) (view the full programme here)
For this 3rd online encounter between the three artists, Distant Feeling(s) - curated by Tessa Garland and Cinzia Cremona for the programme at the Nunnery Gallery (London, UK) - the main question remains:
How does it feel to share an interface with eyes closed and no talking?
A moment of digital mindfulness, a moment to experience the relational tissue that networked environments (expanded to several layers of our common daily routines) provide. By using an interface that relies on senses activated by audio and video in order to establish communication we take a moment to explore the possibilities beyond using those same senses, this time by opening the possibility for others to join.
Annie Abrahams (FR), Lisa Parra (US), Daniel Pinheiro (PT) + possible participants at the gallery + online participants
The piece presented by Annie Abrahams (Distant Feeling(s) #1) continues the research of an artist who challenges the relational utopias attributed to the internet by creating performances which reveal empty yet precious moments, and the banality of interpersonal relations. The performance links Abrahams to two other artists (Daniel Pinheiro & Lisa Parra); from three different locations the three seek to communicate sensations and emotions. Cinzia Cremona (one of the curators) in ARSHAKE Oct. 3 2016.
The link to join the zoom.us meeting dedicated to this event will be shared soon.
(Download the application - desktop or other devices - and "Join meeting" ID = 630407193: https://zoom.us/j/630407193 at the right time.)
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 and, particularly in this case, by removing the fundamental sense that allows connectedness to happen in a mainly visual rationalized culture we question the following: what are we left with?
with Annie Abrahams (Montpellier, France), Lisa Parra (Los Angeles, USA) and Daniel Pinheiro (Lisbon, Portugal)
collaborator: Olivia Jack
Distant Feeling(s) #2 will be the second encounter between the three artists. The artists will meet according to the rules of this encounter and the event will be livestreamed directly to the reSense [movement, performance, technology, art] Festival - 25-31 July 2016.
"If the loss or distortion of information is going to be great, might this not have an effect on the desirability of the technology?" - «The linguistic future of the Internet» David Crystal (2004)
MOUTH-TO-MOUTH is another encounter from Lisa Parra ( @parralis ) and Daniel Pinheiro ( @daniel-pinheiro ) as they continue LAND PROJECT.
Invited to perform at Maus Hábitos (Porto, Portugal) the encounter will address language as the starting point for their interaction. (April 1st, 10.30pm (GMT+1))
While in Placelessness (developed in residence in October 2015 and performed across a distance in January 2016) they explore the architecture of Internet's lack of "time" and "space", this encounter aims at discussing the importance of language as a place of (mis)information and disembodiment, building upon Portuguese words (verbs, nouns, pronouns ...) to develop a mash-up where communication is transformed while travelling between their mouths and physically translated into their own bodies present at the same "time" in different contexts ("spaces"). A communicative nomenclature that is shaped by a mediated communicative relationship.
Distant Feeling(s) 17min35 Edited video available for projection, installation, exhibition. Contact [email protected] or [email protected] March, 4 2016. Daniel Pinheiro in Porto, Annie…
