A performance-installation about the hypermobility of men nowadays.

A big empty space with in the middle a glass cube. Inside and around it a group of people. We walk, we explore, and we seem to know where we are going. We move swiftly and are constantly shifting between identities and jobs, and between political and sexual preference. We see and are being seen, we showcase ourselves to see what we have become. We identify and differentiate, merge and reveal. But what’s left from us when we are constantly on the move, continuously changing shapes? Nomads is the first performance-installation in a series about ‘men on display’.

We see a big empty floor and a house of glass. Inside and around is a group of people. Bodies looking for their place in the whole, the right position between itself and the other, being close enough to be part of something, and with enough distance to be able to separate.

This quest manifests itself all around us. The way you are looking for a seat in the train in a four-seater, preferably diagonally opposite to the other to give your legs some space. Maybe your eyes cross for only a second. Your neighbour has an intimate conversation with his girlfriend on the other side of the world about the divorce of his parents, while you are catapulting your earwax to the other side of the aisle. We are taking some space for ourselves and give others space to do the same. 

But when does this giving of space change from a sense of respect to an egocentric coldness? The French anthropologist Marc Augé wrote, in ‘Non-places, introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity.’ (1992), about a growth of ‘place’ as we have known for ages in a whole new direction. He writes about a place that is not concerned with social or historical contexts and that obviates the need of social interactions. Train stations, airports, highways, roadhouses, waiting rooms; they all are transit spaces, only meant to move through in your travel from A to B. They are there not to be, not to stay. But these so-called ‘non-places’ are specifically facilitated and designed to be as transparant as possible for everyone; so we feel ‘free’ in them. It is a kind of freedom that is based on a false independence, since the choices we will make are precisely coded. Nevertheless these spaces do offer us the space and freedom to be on our own, to be ‘ourselves’ around others.

What is this notion of ‘self’? A few decades ago we found ourselves living from quite a clear separation of inside and outside, private and public. Nowadays these environments seem to be more and more merged together. The strict social classes are slowly fusing and leaving us in a big wasteland of opportunities in which we need to position ourselves anew. In a society in which everyone can become everything, we are drowning in chances to live the life we really want to live.”

Eagerly we try to ‘fill’ ourselves with the right experiences, hobbies, friends, political point of views and customized shoes. But this practise seems endlessly because we want to grow so bad. And so we keep on shifting, adjusting, filling and scrapping. We are copying others and disassociating again. In this way the line between our ‘self’ and the ‘other’ gets more and more blurry. We look at others and they look back, while displaying ourselves to see who we are. We look in the mirror and ask ourselves: is this me? We live in a time where we are constantly confronted with this essential human struggle: situating ourselves between the self and the other, finding a balance between living up to authenticity and playing a role, being busy with watching others and being seen ourselves.

Nomads is part one in a series of performance installations about ‘men on display’. Part two is Gods, in which Sam shifted her focus from the public space to the private space: the house. A place that is balancing between private and a showcase for the ‘self’. In line with Nomads, Gods is positioned in the same glass cube, balancing on the edge of theatre and visual arts. In this setting Sam sharpens the relationship between inside and outside, viewer and spectator.