Mit Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Matt Hilvers, Anna Jermolaewa, Jonida Laci, Leslie Thornton, Lea Vajda
“Being-with is not something we achieve but something we are already inside of. The cultural theorist Lauren Berlant spent decades making this argument. In their view, intimacy is a public phenomenon—one that produces belonging while continually negotiating closeness and distance, acceptance and rejection. (…) The exhibition is one such site of temporary intimacies—a space where strangers agree to be near one another. Looking is never solitary. It is shaped by awareness of others who are also looking, waiting, breathing, coughing, passing by. Moving image takes time. And so do the encounters this exhibition is interested in. As a time-based medium, it can both stage and hold them. People are closer than they appear asks whether looking together can be a civic practice—one that insists on attention, and on the inconvenient work of coexistence with each other.”