forum: Interview with Rachel Zerihan

Interview run by Ben Craggs.

Rachel Zerihan is a PhD Researcher at the School of Arts, Roehampton
University and Sessional Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London.

Firstly may I take this opportunity to thank Rachel, the
co-organiser of Intimacy, for taking time out to contribute to this
discussion?

1) As has already been identified Intimacy is culturally urgent series
of events; developments in technologies both online and in the real
world are prompting us to ask ‘what is it to be intimate’
‘what is closeness’ and how are we to relate to ourselves
and to others as technologies increasingly intervene. I wonder if you
could perhaps start by focussing thoughts on what is a very fast moving
and diverse area of research. What do you feel are the most significant
developments that prompted you to organise Intimacy I am thinking maybe
the development of virtual bodies in communities such as Second Life or
perhaps the development of haptic technologies?

R: My passion lays in how intimacy is played out across and between bodies
in performance so your references to Second Life and Haptic Technologies
are probably areas Maria might choose to respond to! As well as
considering how a technology might “intervene” between
spectator and performer, I'm particularly drawn to pieces that address
the relationship between performance/er and technology since often they
call into question all kinds of politics of performance and innovative
strategies that I often find engaging. I am very interested in examining
the prolific rise in the amount of One to One performances and
performances for small groups of people in terms of formal decisions an
artist/practitioner makes about the encounter they are offering their
other. For me, part of the cultural urgency of Intimacy was to reflect
various responses to the socio-political climate we are living in and
the paradoxical sense of insecurity/spillage that appears to
pervading disciplinary, aesthetic and phenomenological borders at the
moment.

2) There seems to be an interesting separation between, the works of
Kira O’Reilly for example, which force a very visceral experience
of the body and of flesh and those, which are increasingly appearing on
the virtual community ‘Second Life’. The latter seems to
relish the annulment of the physical body, perhaps reflecting a fear of
flesh, favouring instead an easily ‘editable’, adaptable and
repairable form. I wonder if you could comment on whether you feel there
is an irreparable breach between these two worlds? Or perhaps does
reading these examples together offer a rethinking of embodiment?

R: I don't think Intimacy was designed to force a bridge between
performance works that occur in very distinct environments. However,
Maria and I were interested in platforming performance works that
addressed both extremely visceral encounters and strategies of
technology as in Kira O'Reilly's works that you reference above.
O'Reilly has used both technological equipment (video camera, screen)
and bio-technology practice in her extraordinary art-works so her
presence as a workshop leader was particularly welcome and very well
received. To respond to your question from a personal point of view as
someone (still)fascinated by the affect of the body in performance, I
would have to reject your suggestion of a “fear of flesh”
but would instead argue that there is a particular investment, across
disciplines, in interrogating the nature, limits and malleability of
flesh whether that “stuff” comes from an embodied presence
on a computer screen, a multitude
of cells under a microscope or that surface organ we are cloaked
in–our external interface between our-selves and others.