Who dreams of the untouched, 2022
Coehoorn Arnhem (NL) &
University of Coblenz (DE)
Lecture Performance, 42’00’’
[1] Who dreams of the untouched (2022) provides insight into a process and rhizome-like examination of questions of physical and spatial perception, orientation and navigation.
[2] The space is illuminated by a purple light. It offers several possibilities to inhabit the space. You are invited to sit or lay down to follow a projection on the ceiling. The projection shows a 3D-animation by the artist Saou Tanaka, which depicts Euclidean as well as cartographic representations of land(scape) and space, to which the participants’ bodies are set in relation.
One of the elementary and essential characteristics of beings as well as objects is their location in space. Spatial perception plays a central role in guiding spatial behavior. Space is an immediate experience. Objects and people are not only locatable in space; they also own an extension in space, they are perceptible and measurable in at least three dimensions. For this description, the orientation as well as navigation, the three-dimensional Euclidean space and the Cartesian coordinate system are fundamental—at least from a European perspective.
[3] According to European understanding, spatial orientation is always determined from an egocentric perspective. To what extent does this perspective influence one’s relationship to the exterior, other beings, and the (seemingly) inanimate? The presentation describes the mapping of untouched land, the top-down view, as an act of power that promotes perceptions of wilderness and otherness which must be tamed or conquered. Reflecting a critical spatial practice, the project explores the limitations of western languages to express situatedness and inspires imagining new perspectives on, and relationships to: bodies, land(scapes), and (movement in) space.
But it is only evident to certain languages, to put a person at the center of exploring and determining space. This egocentric, or idiocentric view produces a specific positioning related to other beings and the (seemingly) inanimate. Subjects brought up as part of white western culture learn to orient within the exterior by putting themselves at the very center of it. Establishing their self at the center, they navigate along Euclidean spatial axes.