4. Distance


“We did not set eyes on him when he came back. We knew he was there (there are many signs which betray the presence of a guest in the house, even when he remains invisible). But for a number of days – much more than a week – we never saw him. 

Shall I admit it? His absence did not leave my mind at peace. I thought of him, I don’t know how far it wasn’t with regret or anxiety. Neither I nor my niece spoke of him. But in the evening when we sometimes heard the dull echo of his uneven step upstairs I could clearly see from her sudden obstinate busying with her work, from the faint lines that gave her face an expression which was both set and expectant, that she was not immune from thoughts like mine.”

- Vercours [Jean Bruller] (1991 [19421]) The Silence of the Sea. Translated by Cyril Connolly. Oxford: Berg.

***

On the first morning, we didn’t go round the circle and ‘do names’. We only committed an hour at the end of the two days for people to formally introduce themselves. There was time to speak together and challenge one another, and laugh and eat together: but for the most part participants came to – and left – this workshop with significantly different interests and experiences. 
 
We introduced the practice of Ghosting through four rules: 
- The ghosts can cross boundaries, moving freely between studios, offices, private and public spaces. 
- The ghosts can interact with the physical plane (they pick things up, slam doors, turn things on and off).
 -The ghosts can’t speak.
 -The ghosts can’t be seen. 

We left out some materials: plastics, paper, tape, fabric, rope, napkins and stationary. Participants were encouraged to grab whatever they needed, and then transform themselves apart from one another – or at the very least politely avert their gaze – as they transcended onto the spiritual plane. Stumbling out of the room to wander the corridors, stairwells, studios and offices, they discovered for themselves what they – as ghosts – might become preoccupied with. 

Covering the face was encouraged. Not only does it make it hard to recognize the ‘real’ identity of the ghost, it compromises and blinkers their own vision. They could only see and act on isolated textures, objects and possible body-parts. Encounters in this state (ghost-to-ghost, and ghost-to-human) are sudden, uncertain, and difficult to resolve. As a practice, it feels isolating and individual.

Much relational arts practice idealises notions of ‘empathy’, ‘togetherness’ and ‘good feeling’. In particular, arts workshops are plagued by what dance and performance artist Keith Hennessy describes as “a kind of non-consensual ideology”, in which the room becomes quickly saturated with presumptions that people’s understanding and experiences are collectively shared. Instead, Ghosting encourages forms of encounter and collectivity that feel tentative or fraught, as an opportunity to endure difference without explanation or resolve. For us, it is a practice of distance: of confronting distance; and embodying and generously offering that distance to others. 

And this distance is, despite its apparent anti-relationality, relational. Being-by-yourself is being-by-yourself. You need another – to view, or be viewed by, or remembered, or kept apart from – for distance to come about. Roland Barthes wrote about the peculiar impossibility of giving an account of one’s separation. It must be spoken about from the voice of the other:

“I myself cannot (as an enamoured subject) construct my love story to the end: I am its poet (its bard) only from the beginning; the end, like my own death, belongs to others; it is up to them to write the fiction, the external, mythic narrative.”

Perhaps this is a good time to remind ourselves, and the reader, that this writing is coming from Rohanne and Paul. Our words only reflect what we thought about as we looked at, and remembered, these strange and disquieting ghosts.

***

- Keith Hennessy (2013) Keith Hennessy talks to Nancy Stark Smith Nov 12. 26 Oct. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0CtxbpErYs

- Roland Barthes (2002 [1977]) A Lover’s Discourse. Translated by Richard Howard.
London: Vintage.