Safety Distance

"The idea of distance always assumes the existence of two points. Even when the distance is null, it is so for two coincident points. It is formalised and generalised by mathematics through the concept of metric. A space where there is a defined distance or metric is called a metric space." - Wikipedia
The pandemic accelerated a series of epiphenomena, among them the already called "first global catastrophe of the digital age" - the bewildering of the near and the far (Cachopo,2020). It has highlighted some distances/asymmetries. It has created others. The physical evidence of confinement was as or more felt by the body as by the psyche. At the same time we dealt with the decrease of the depth of field, we missed the horizon, a problem not only of perception but of lack of imagination. "Digital remediation", "security" and the dangers that modern human activities have entailed with the creation of new monsters - marvels of symbiosis but terrifying threats of climate dysfunction - as Anna Tsing1 defines them, were issues that tore us apart and brought the concept of distance to a paradoxical point that highlights the two senses of entanglement: life and danger, closeness and distance.

Safety distance arises from the dialogue I was interested in establishing between the minimum distances advised by the DGS and the shortening of distances between humans and wild animals that is said to have been at the root of the pandemic crisis. I settled on a concept that I have heard repeatedly in recent times and that has suddenly become part of the common lexicon - that of safety distance - to problematize it and bring into debate the ways in which the 'other' is constituted, questioning the close power relations that are established in space [between], whether [between] humans or non-humans. I proposed to start from these two notions - distance and security - to apply them to contexts in which the oscillation between near and far becomes a factor for survival and the exercise of power by one over another. Contexts that generate the following structuring chapters of the performance to be presented: 1. Maps, 2. Instructions, 3. Survivalism, 4. Hunting and Domestication, 5. Colonization, 6. Individuation and 7. Ecology.

1Tsing, A., Swanson, H., Gan, E. & Bubandt, N. (Eds.). Arts of living in a damaged planet. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

Creation and Interpretation: Joana Magalhães

Research and creation support: Maria Inês Marques, Plataforma UMA

Sound composition: Rodrigo Malvar

Light and sound design: Vasco Ferreira Creative support: Self-Mistake