Intimacy Opportunity

INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY is an installation and interactive virtual performance that explores the shifting textures of selfhood and intimacy in the virtual age. It is an invitation to experience and discuss these textures, performer and participant together, in a pursuit of “generous narcissism.” The concept of generous narcissism, the reclamation of narcissistic practice as a resistant mode of queer self-making and community formation, is explored in depth in the more strictly academic research component of my thesis project. INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY was developed as something like an aesthetic research method, an interactive environment within which to explore the concept of generous narcissism using tools beyond the academic and the verbal.

The titular “intimacy” that I am considering is a closeness, a “getting to know you” that queers the borders between fiction and authenticity, between public and private space. It is an intimacy that develops in a complicated space, in between and both virtual and physical, colliding the private cozy of the bedroom with the strange publicity of the online broadcast. It is an intimacy that takes seriously one’s own understanding of oneself, privileging the sincerity of fiction over claustrophobic, socially prescribed notions of authenticity. In other words, INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY is an opportunity to be seen exactly as you are, and on your terms - there is no truth but your own. It is an intimacy that exposes the articulate capacity of virtual anonymity, and that thrives on the slips of self and other in the data stream of cyberspace.

IMAGE: A panoramic view of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY.

  VIDEO: The WAITING ROOM

INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY: A Study in Generous Narcissism took place on April 13th, from the hours of 3-6 PM, at TEMP Art Space on 57 Walker in Manhattan. For three hours, I sat cloistered in a small private room in the upstairs of the gallery and invited my audience to interact with me from a prepared environment in the basement over Skype. Audience members would arrive, walk downstairs and be greeted by a secretary (hired for the occasion), and placed onto a waiting list . While they waited for their turn to experience INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY, audience members could have a drink and relax in the first environment, WAITING ROOM. This was a sort of cozy living room, furnished comfortably with couches and mood lighting, meant to evoke a chic psychotherapist’s waiting room. Once their name was called, an audience member would return to the secretary’s desk, briefed on the etiquette of the experience, and asked to remove their shoes before walking down a candlelit velvet runway and entering the black velvet tent in which the Skype-enabled computer awaited. This tent was called NUZZLE NEST.

The etiquette of the INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY was described to the audience in the following terms:

Enter, sit, put on the headphones. Get comfortable. Be generous. Be open. You may leave when you like, as long as you say goodbye. You can be as anonymous as you like.

Type “hello” to begin.

VIDEO: The Secretary / Briefing

It was within NUZZLE NEST that the audience member encountered the kernel of the experience, the promised INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY. To enter, the participant had to crawl unshod into the small velvet tent, carpeted against the rough cement of the gallery floor with soft faux fur in a grass green. The interior of NUZZLE NEST was designed to inspire a sense of peaceful welcome, a calm space of respite and confession. Strewn with pillows, makeup, glitter and my childhood teddy bear (named Nana), and hidden from sight by thick curtains, lit only by a small lamp, NUZZLE NEST was meant to strike somewhere between a feminine child’s blanket fort and a particularly kooky psychotherapist’s practice space. One visitor described the space as “a child’s fantasy, manifested with adult intentions,” and that pretty accurately sums up the intentions of the space.

IMAGE: Inside the NUZZLE NEST. Nana Bear presides.

At the center of the space, resting on a small crate draped in black velvet, was a Macbook, streaming a live video feed from my tiny cloister upstairs. This feed was the only presence of my individual self in the space, trickling my image across the strained waves of the gallery’s wireless connection. Upon entering the tent, the visitor had seven minutes in which to interact with me, either through typed text, spoken word, or (should they choose to remove the black sticker covering the Macbook’s built-in camera) video and gesture. The content of each interaction was decided in that moment; save for a loose plot of leading questions I had prepared in advance, I allowed each interacftion to develop organically within those seven minutes. Some were banal, some were inspiring, many were prurient, and several brought both myself and the visitor to tears. All were confidential.

By the end of the durational performance of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY, I was exhausted physically and mentally, as well as both drained and replenished emotionally and spiritually. I had arranged a strange economy of affect and energy, and it morphed from my expectations dramatically even within its very short span of activity. I hadn’t expected anonymity to be such a crucial element of the interaction: the most revelatory sessions in the tent were with individuals whose names, faces and voices I will never know, and some of the most exhausting were with friends who chose to reveal themselves and say hello. The explosive effect of anonymity on confession and intimacy is nothing new - priests and gay cruise artists have been exploiting that dynamic for centuries, and almost all of us are familiar at some level with the radical potential for self-creation promised by online anonymity. However, what felt unusual was how anonymity seemed to afford the individuals an opportunity to reveal themselves to themselves as well as to me; I was able to offer the anonymous visitors a sort of visible, identifiable mirror against which to project elements of themselves and reflect them back, now legible. This may be why one visitor described their session in the guestbook (in which the Secretary urged each guest to record their experiences) as a “virtual psychotherapy chamber,” haunted by the mirror of Lacan. Strangely enough, though the conceptual and political undergirding of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY was deeply concerned with the importance of personal history, context and self-identity, visitors to the nest felt freest to be exactly who they were when they weren’t seen. Or perhaps I felt most able to see them when they were invisible. It has been months since the performance, and I will confess that I am still unpacking so much of what happened in those three hours.

On the topic of the anonymous visitor, an element I’d like to eliminate from future performances of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY is the spoken voice of the audience. The most exhausting and least interesting sessions were the spoken ones. Something about the difficulty of speaking over an already burdened wireless connection, as well as the literal physical exertion of speaking in the intimate mode fostered by the environment, made speech less a liberation than a chore. It would be worth rehearsing the performance again with strangers on a stronger wireless connection to confirm this; I would have predicted speech to be the most revelatory mode, as it embodies an interacftion otherwise confined to the screen. Then again, that difficulty of embodying text is intimately involved with the questions of virtual and physical bodies that INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY seeks to engage.

Choosing the Artistic Thesis

My decision to pursue an artistic thesis was by no means a simple one. Until my arrival at NYU, my academic work had been pretty strictly academic, concentrating on the interpretation and analysis of cultural productions rather than their performance or creation. However, the opportunity provided by the elasticity of the individualized concentration to explore different modes of academic exploration - for example, expanding the form of the essay, or producing a “fantasy syllabus” in lieu of a final paper - helped me to develop a broader understanding of what can constitute academic work.

My time in the department of Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts has had a particular influence on my understanding of academic labor. Deborah Kapchan’s course on “Sense, Affect, Embodiment” (taken fall of 2011), a survey of multiple disciplines, including anthropology, phenomenology and affect, offered an investigation into modes of thinking, feeling and communicating beyond the linguistic. A large part of the course was a critique of the “linguistic turn” in the humanities, and a consideration of the affective and sensual dimensions of experience as relevant subjects of academic attention. Dr. Kapchan’s course greatly broadened my scholastic imagination, and my understanding of what academia could look and feel like.

Patricia Clough’s course on “Performance and the Technological Imagination” was another that indelibly marked the quality of my academic work. If “Sense, Affect, Embodiment” blurred the lines dividing “language” from “experience,” “Performance and the Technological Imagination” irrevocably shifted my understanding of the borders of the “natural” and the technological. Presenting itself as an intellectual smorgasbord comprising poetics, sociology, critical science studies and more, it was easily the most confusing, productive and radical academic journey I have ever been on. It was in this course that I first encountered the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, thinkers whose work now comprises the foundation of my thesis project. Patricia asked for two pages of response per week, leading up to a final portfolio of sorts, and encouraged creativity and risk in style and thought from her students. My final project was a collection of poetic and visual fragments emerging from and inspired by our readings and discussions. It was the most risky academic endeavor I’d yet undertaken, and it paid off. I developed a multifaceted approach to philosophy and criticism as they intertwine with cultural production, and my understanding of culture in the Internet age was forever shifted.

The media of installation and performance seemed particularly useful to me in emphasizing questions of time and space with regard to virtual presence and intimacy - forcing the spectral, gaseous quality of virtual performance and persona into a “solid” environment - but having never taken a formal course in performance nor installation, I was compelled from the earliest stages of my project to defend it, and repeatedly. Professor Julie Malnig, facilitator of the Artistic Master’s Thesis seminar, was an invaluable sounding board for my ideas. Time and time again I had to defend my decision to undertake a thesis project outside my official academic itinerary, a requirement that cemented my resolve and helped me understand exactly why performance was truly the most appropriate medium for what I want to communicate. Ironic, I suppose, that in order to demonstrate the insufficiency of language to encapsulate the delicate mechanics of identity, I was forced to repeatedly defend myself using the language of the academy - an indictment I am ultimately grateful for, in its forcing me to defend my choices to myself.

My work seeks to dissolve the boundaries between academic and artistic, artistic and personal, physical and virtual, authentic and fictional, natural and performed. The performance element of my thesis project represents my attempt to bridge the gap between theory and performance. By engaging with performance as a method of exploring questions I’ve since restricted to academic work, I want to mobilize concepts drawn from my work in performance studies, screen studies, and queer critical/political theory. Through the production of a sacred space in which to explore the modulated intimacies of a world always already mediated by technology, I want to dissolve the wall between the seminar and the performance space, as well as that between the academy and the field of political intervention. This performance will be an interdisciplinary interrogation of the role of the performer’s body in performance art, as well as the role of the individual body in contemporary modes and techniques of closeness. I want INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY will offer just that: an opportunity for performer and participants alike to blur the lines that divide us, make the audience an actant, the performer an activist as well as a friend, and to ask questions about the performance and production of intimacy in virtual space.

Manifesting Space: Nuzzle Nest/Nouage

One of my primary interests in both the academic and artistic components of my project is the relationship between identity, persona and performance on the Internet. I’m interested in the way that technologies of communication mediate public and private performances of self: who one is in “real life” is often drastically different than who one is online, and even then personas vary dramatically between discrete virtual arenas. How has the Internet modulated the contemporary self, encouraging splits in persona, and how does the performance of self online work to expose the mechanics of identity production? What are the possibilities of exposure and anonymity in the perpendicular grammars of online identity? The emotional structure of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY relies upon my own online persona, specifically on Tumblr, as a sort of community mother - a wellspring of nurturing, maternal energy, warm, available, honest, giving of time and attention. The motherly energy of my particular corner of the Internet is consistent and evident enough to have received the nickname “Nuzzle Nest.” The manifestation of the Nuzzle Nest became an unexpectedly crucial aim of my performance, an endeavor in making the diffuse, gaseous quality of my online persona into a specific environment and relational experience.

IMAGE: Approaching NUZZLE NEST.

The maternal figure I embody on Tumblr is something like the mother of a drag house: a queer reclamation of the mother that affords the care and nurturing so many of we queers are refused. However, the energy I try to bring to my corner of the internet is not necessarily restricted to the form of the maternal. More than “mother,” I strive to be sister: an intentionally femme and feminine energy, receptive and nurturing as well as vulnerable, and never condescending or authoritarian. I considered this particular cluster of affects in choosing the materials with which to manifest the Nuzzle Nest In Real Life - IRL, as it were. Black velvet, like mother, stands for comfort: inviting, yet protective. Soft to the touch, and opaque, a warm cloak within which to crawl and hide and be safe and let layers peel away. Lit by the sister glows of candlelight and monitor, I wanted the participants in INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY to feel hidden away and seen only when and how they chose - if only for that precious seven minutes in Nuzzle Nest.

IMAGE: A couple of posts in my #nuzzlenest tag, near the time of my performance.

I must emphasize that the vulnerability I describe is not necessarily weakness, or at least weakness as it is commonly understood. My goal with INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY, as in my emotional dealings generally, was to encourage a radical intimacy: a discovery of the strength in making oneself vulnerable. The dynamic of the interaction was structured around this idea: by making myself visible in a live video feed, but offering my interlocutor the opportunity to remain anonymous, I attempted to encourage a freedom of expression and presentation unavailable elsewhere. The radical intimacy I envision with this project is absolutely political: a conscious, orchestrated vulnerability. The intimacy of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY aims to bombard the stagnant field of the queer body politic, slowed by bourgeois interests and seeking to integrate the queer into a stultifying, binary public legal category, with a queer kinship that exceeds the bounds of name and body. A moment of true unmediated intimacy in a meditated environment.

IMAGE: A sister's response to the experience.

In developing INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY, I was interested in both the speed and the quality of online intimacy; by using my own particular techniques of emotional engagement in a structured situation, I revealed myself as an invitation for the Other to reveal themselves to me. This confessional mode of relational performance is, of course, not necessarily new. I researched and considered the artistic foundations of performance art in which the artist’s presence, and specifically their vulnerability, are the focus of the work. Marina Abramovic’s Rhythm 0 (1974), in which the artist made her body vulnerable to invasion and even attack by audience members with access to a wide array of objects before her for four hours, was a particular inspiration. The presentation of the self as a totally vulnerable object of inquiry and injury was an elegant and shocking mode of communicating important questions about the relation of oneself to a largely anonymous public, beneath which there stirs a quiet and untapped aggression. Rhythm 0 was one of the earliest in Abramovic’s long career of intrepid explorations of intimacy.

However, in preparing my own performance, I wanted to consider the drastic shift in the texture of public space since Rhythm 0. While the dynamic of vulnerability and intimacy is extremely compelling, intimacy no longer functions in the same way that it did before the Internet. If the academic component of my project asks how narcissism functions in virtual community to afford marginalized queer subjects the opportunity to rehearse and affirm identities unrecognized by society, INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY asks how intimacy functions in a mediated public, a social environment in which physical and virtual space are less and less distinct, and in which the possibility of privacy grows more and more distant. By making myself vulnerable without being physically present, I wanted to explore the confusing new emotional architectures of online intimacy.

IMAGE: Alone?

As a piece of live performance from which the performer’s body is nearly totally absent, my project exists in a strange conversation with the genre of relational performance art. However, it was important to me in preparing INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY that my project tackle the question of embodiment with regard to online persona. After much deliberation, I decided the best way to demonstrate the confusion of virtual and physical reality in the Internet age was to confuse one of the fundamentals of performance art: the physical presence of the performer. As I mention earlier, creating the physical environment of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY was a process of manifesting fantasy. I wanted to take this playful emotional architecture I’d developed online, the Nuzzle Nest, and somehow make it real. I conceived of this as something of a magical process, a summoning of energies that had heretofore existed only online, and their refraction into the soft, welcoming contours of a physical space geared toward comfort and intimacy. This was perhaps the most ambitious element of my performance and installation concept: in producing an environment that in its softness, warmth, and nurturing energy was not unlike a sort of large queer womb, I wanted to experiment with the expansion of my virtual body into a literal physical space, in order to call attention to the complex trajectories of energy and affect in the age of virtual communication. Creating the environments of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY was in the most literal sense, “making something happen.”

VIDEO: Manifesting fantasy inside the NUZZLE NEST.

In designing the environments of LIVING ROOM and NUZZLE NEST, I had to envision the emotional and physical trajectories of potential audience members. I had originally wanted each of the spaces to encourage dramatically different affective situations from one another: WAITING ROOM was to be warm and inviting, and the INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY (not yet NUZZLE NEST) was to be cold, stark, clinical and exposing. Over the course of several months and dozens of drafts, the qualities of each environment softened and diffused into something totally different. Visitors entered a WAITING ROOM that was comfortable but social, a warm gathering of individuals with a similar intention; entering NUZZLE NEST became a ritual, a rehearsed series of motions - taking off shoes, walking through candles, crawling through curtains - that I hoped would call attention to the shift in atmosphere from a welcoming public to a nurturing private. At a cultural moment in which all interactions - and especially those that take place on the expansive publics of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter - are never totally private, I wanted to offer a glimpse at a utopian economy of virtual interaction, in which recognition is offered freely and without expectation of return. INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY, I hope, succeeded in affording its visitors the chance to see and be seen, even for just a moment, on exactly their terms, and to offer me the performer nothing else but the gift of providing that experience.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?

INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY: A STUDY IN GENEROUS NARCISSISM was an enormous success. I can say without sucking my own dick (too much) that it was magic, and that its magic was entirely dependent on the people and energies supporting it. Over the span of a few days - building it, fluffing it, testing it and finally running it - INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY became something entirely other than what I’d originally imagined, and it was incredible.

I spent nearly a year developing this piece, a month gathering materials and planning the event, a frantic week in building it, and four hours performing it, from a cramped private bathroom. I want to maintain the integrity of that unusually intimate and often anonymous space, so I’m avoiding specific details, but suffice it to say, the profound experiences that emerged from the performance of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY made every bit of work beyond worth it.

This piece was originally imagined as something far more voyeuristic than relational, an exploration of the self and its social and sexual relationship to screens. It became something far better than that. A project that began as an investigation of virtual persona resulted in a manifestation of my own. Building the space, I had a severe realization: I was building Nuzzle Nest, IRL. At one point in the process, I (probably sobbed) “this piece was supposed to be about everyone else, but it’s really about me.” Sort of. More accurately, a project developed with the Other in mind became a much more complex relationship between myself, my selves, and those of the audience: generous narcissism.

Reflecting on it afterward, I realized that what I’d done was basically throw a cozy party in the basement of a gallery. It was an excuse to create a space for people to get comfortable, an zone of unusual intimacy, an excuse for friends to get together and enjoy a drink and think and chat and of course, nuzz. So, a rousing success.

DEDICATIONS/ADORATIONS/GENUFLECTIONS

I don’t feel strange being so shamelessly proud of this project because I was only part of its magic. Truly, INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY nor generous narcissism would exist as they do without the frankly dumbfounding support and love of all these gorgeous queer artists, thinkers, livers, magicians I’ve somehow found myself surrounded by. Bless.

I offer my deep, abiding and insufficient gratitude to everyone involved with this project. Special thanks to sisterqueen Elspeth (ekwws), whose work inspires me every minute of every goddamned day. I live with a goddamned genius. Special, enormous thanks to RJ (kinkyroads), without whom Nuzzle Nest would have been a hastily assembled pile of velvet and tears, and without whose dedication and friendship, so would I have been.

Thanks to everyone who inspires, supports and contributes to my tiny idea seeds, whether or not you’re aware. To the geniuses I’ve been blessed enough to orbit and nuzz in virtual space, to live and love with in physical space, to everyone who reblogged and reposted and spread the word of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY, who performed generous narcissism and sent along the energy, to those of you who made it out and to those of you who were there in virtual spirit, to those of us who do the work of building a community, a context in which we can experience intimacy on our terms, in which we can be seen for the gorgeous fictions we’ve created of ourselves, thank you, thank you, beyond words, thank you.

Wow, this feels like a dedications page, and I guess that’s not so off. Both INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY and (especially) the concept of generous narcissism emerged from my relationships with queer magicians, in virtual and physical realms. It simply doesn’t exist without friendship. Therefore, the projects of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY and generous narcissism are dedicated to all you babies who with or without knowing it, helped me understand the personal and political power of narcissism; the enormous importance of recognition (and anonymity!) to context and self; and of course, queer friendship.

THE FUTURE OF INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY + GENEROUS NARCISSISM + MY WORK GENERALLY

It was a big decision, but after the overwhelming success of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY this time around, I’ve decided to take the Nuzzle Nest on tour. We’re going to Europe!!! …just kidding.

This incarnation of INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY was truly an enormous success, and I think it’s good to let this project rest a while. As my dear gay wife Adrian put it, Nuzzle Nest exists in three phases: gas, liquid, and solid. It takes a lot of energy to make something as gaseous, as phantasmic as the virtually emergent Nuzzle Nest a solid, but it was done. It’s dissolved again, now, and who knows when it will become solid again. Someday, though.

That isn’t to say I’m done with installation and performance. Far from it. INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY was my freshman effort as a performance artist, definitely the first of many. I’m already working on another project tangentially connected to generous narcissism, INFANT PHENOMENOLOGY, details forthcoming. I’ve also got several performances coming up and many more in mind for the coming months. Most immediately, I’ve been asked by my sister Elspeth to contribute a video piece to her and our friend Nik’s takeover of the performance space at Temp, “24 HR,” coming up this Saturday at 7:30. I’ll be blabbing and reblogging about this in other posts, but COME COME COME. I’m also giving a lecture and performance in June, at Baltimore’s SophiaJacob art gallery, so if you’re nearby, you have to come to that too.

As for the remainder of my thesis, there is still a LOT of work to be done. INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY embodies the performance component of a hybrid artistic thesis, combining an artistic and academic investigation. Having performed a study in generous narcissism, it’s now time for me to continue writing the theoretical architecture of the concept. Anyone interested in learning more about the concept of generous narcissism, feel free to hit me up - god knows I haven’t been able to shut up about it for months, and returning to the writing is only gonna exacerbate that. I’m really excited for the work, but it’ll be an arduous four months. Then, in September, I defend, and (God willing) swipe a diploma from the fool hands of the NYU administration. Losers.

Whew. Talk about narcissism. What a post. I’m cutting myself off. Much more to come, any questions, hit me, so excited, holy shit this happened wow.

Again, and never enough, DEEPEST THANKS to everyone who helped Nuzzle Nest become a reality - to those of you who helped conceive of it, whose very existences and presences in virtual and physical space developed it, who helped spread the word, who helped build it, who attended and got intimate, who generously sent their magic and their self-love, your energies were felt, your work was more appreciated than can ever be repaid, and your friendship more meaningful than I can express. Maybe I’ll just hold a big-ass banquet for all my friends. That seems like a good idea.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY: A Study in Generous Narcissism is an interactive virtual performance that asks how we communicate and feel one an/Other in a moment that is always already mediated. The piece considers the radical potential of online space as a queer alternative public. How has the dissolution of the borders between flesh and information enabled opportunities for new and more queer kinds of intimacy, friendship, and erotics?

INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY: A Study in Generous Narcissism is happening on Saturday, April 13th, from 3-6 PM, at TEMP Art Space, 57 Walker in Manhattan.

INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY: A Study in Generous Narcissism

is a relational performance that explores the shifting textures of intimacy in the virtual age. It is an invitation to experience these textures, together, in the context of what I am calling “generous narcissism.”

The titular “intimacy” that I am considering is a closeness, a “getting to know you” that queers the borders between fiction and authenticity, between public and private space. It is an intimacy that develops in virtual space, as a relentless demand for one’s own context. It is an intimacy that takes seriously one’s understanding of oneself, privileging the truth of personal fiction over a stultifying authenticity. It is an intimacy that thrives on the slips of self and other in the data stream of cyberspace.

In response to a cultural context that is at best discouraging and at worst violently suffocating of identities, genders, affections unrecognized by mainstream society, queer subjects at the fringes produce and patrol safe spaces, virtual communities of radical self-making. We demand our context. We demand to see ourselves reflected, if not in the warped glass of flesh, then by and for ourselves, online, together, holographic. Aspirational imaging in relentless pursuit of the future.

This is the project of “generous narcissism:” an obsession with the image that does not suffocate, but strengthens. A “chain of holograms” that grows stronger with each link. “Selfies as resistance:” an extreme reclamation of self-production through image. INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY is an invitation: to reframe narcissism as a tool of relational empowerment, and to consider the importance of fiction in contemporary self-production.

What was Narcissus’s cardinal sin? Did he love himself too much? No, his sin was stasis - he was frozen in his worship of himself. Generous narcissism breathes life into the dead present of Narcissus. The image is no longer still - it moves, with all the speed of data streams. Generous narcissism means touching the pond that Narcissus touched, but keeping mobile, still dissolved, and feeling someone touching back.

INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY is exactly that: an opportunity for intimacy, or perhaps an intimate opportunity. It is yours to decide.

AN INVITATION

Please, come in, have a seat, get comfortable in our WAITING ROOM. Relax, enjoy a beer and take your time as you await your invitation into INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY.

AN EXPLORATION

Reality no longer holds tight the way we feel it used to.

“Always already online”: can we so quickly draw division between reality and fantasy, performance and “the truth,” persona and the person?

The cut and dry divide of virtual from actual no longer makes sense: technologies of holographic presence blur the lines, already frail, between flesh and fiction.

INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY doesn’t seek to answer questions, but unearth them: to present a situation thick with possibility. What, today, is “privacy,” is “desire,” is “intimacy?” What is seeing, what is feeling, what is touch? How close are we, our bodies, in an age of mediated sensing, an age of bare and immediate, available proximity?

AN OPPORTUNITY

We offer you a choice: an opportunity.

An exchange.

How close are you prepared to come: to an/other, to desire, the desire for and of an/other?

This is INTIMACY OPPORTUNITY.