M HKA Ensembles

INTERPERSONAL SPACE

We thought about this notion when bringing together the works by Marina Abramović and Ulay, Stefanos Tsivopoulos and Bernd Lohaus.

Are we an autonomous existence shielded by our skin and confined within the limits of our body, or is our psychical and mental space inseparable from the space of others? Is it possible to depict our entity as residing in an interpersonal space where we are defined by others and our in-between-experience as much as by our own will? We are relations between people, objects and concepts. The space of these relations ranges from the metaphysical to the linguistic and from the social to the erotic.

Ambramović & Ulay create a poignant image of the tension between themselves within a polaroid. In Land by Tsivopoulos the geographical space is the arena for a political-philosophical inquiry by three immigrants who find themselves on a bare island, each one asking questions in another language. Lohaus makes this interrelational space physical with three heavy wood blocks that occupy a space. The middle block is characterized by words handwritten in chalk; ‘while/as opposite/or/between the’. The blocks at the edges have the words ‘YOU’ and ‘I’ carved deep inside the wooden surface.

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