Presence of Absent proposes us for a moment to become intruders inside the intimacy of a person. We see his private screen, his connection through the network, his communication with a distant interlocutor – Cesar – the impossibility of physical contact between them, and how this translates into conflict. Is it a room, is it a workplace? Is it a transmission center, or a surveillance center? From the computer screen we can see an external, faceless hand that controls and manipulates what we see using a system that openly shows us how it works.

This hand seems to decide and manipulate what we see and how we see it, it also watches and spies on us through a camera placed in a corner of this room where we are, which can move, orient itself and approach as it wants. The body that looks at the screen speaks to us, but does not look at us. Does it speak to us? The screen becomes a frontier, an impassable limit. Suddenly the naked body rises and together with the distant interlocutor, they make us part, with an asphyxiating proximity, of a struggle against a space that seems always more crushing. The walls seem to get closer and closer every second.

Suddenly the body on stage decides to go away and leave us alone there, leaving its emptiness in the space. What to do? We can decide whether to follow it or snoop on what is happening on the screen. Who is the person talking to us from a remote place? Is he present there, talking to us? Can he see us? Is it a recording, or is it happening in real time? Now we can decide how to relate to the image. With its speech. We can choose to listen, to answer or to leave. We can finally ask, Where are you, and why aren’t you here, with me? We can see ourselves being spied on, we can hear a voice telling us something. Is it the voice of the image on the screen? Is it the voice of our conscience? Is it the voice of the emptiness left by the person who has left?

This project has been funded by the NRW Kultursekretariat and the Dortmund Stadt Kulturbüro (Distant Land Phase I).