Closeness and distance are contradictory in many ways—while we desire both, we also fear them. Closeness represents well-being and security, but it can also mean loss of freedom, external control, abuse and violence. Distance, on the other hand, allows new perspectives, broader impressions and reflection, but it can also lead to depression and isolation. Balancing closeness and distance is key. Although their relationship is culturally and socially mediated, it is a relationship that is shaped subjectively.

Technological developments are closely connected to how we perceive and experience closeness and distance. Spatial and temporal distance is traversed with the help of technology, be it materially through mobility technologies, or immaterially through telecommunications. This leads to questions regarding the definition of private and public space, and about our zones of proximity and distance being invaded, expanded, or defended.

With Covid-19, we are being confronted by new social distancing regulations disrupting our lifestyles and changing our behavior. Whether direct government ordinances or earnest recommendations, distancing rules, home office, and sheltering at home have been integrated into our everyday work life as well as our private lives. To avoid physical contact, our living rooms are increasingly becoming «management rooms», where not only tele-working, tele-production, teleshopping and tele-communication take place, but also telesurveillance. Covid-19 has accelerated the shift from close-knit society to remote society,1 the transformation from a material, physically based society to an immaterial, telecommunication-based digital society, a society where messages travel by themselves, are carried by signals and no longer by physical bodies. In this form of society, remote technology has replaced the necessity of spatial distance being bridged by physical movement. In view of global warming, reducing motorized mobility is a desirable transformation process.

During lockdown, social closeness has primarily been maintained through telecommunications. Corona has given a massive boost to the long-standing tendency for people to interact nonphysically and virtually. What is new, however, is the stigmatization of physical encounter as dangerous. When it becomes risky to have any physical contact, the question arises of who will be protected and who will be exposed to that risk. The danger of infection increases both the fear of physical contact and yearning for it.1 The pandemic has raised our awareness of the importance of physical proximity (body contact) as well as of our vulnerability. It has also made virtual interaction commonplace and widespread. Due to distancing rules and touch being prohibited, physical materiality is increasingly perceived as something uncertain, an object of desire filled with risks.

How much closeness or distance do we need, how much protection or personal freedom do we want? The relationship between community and individual is regulated by social conventions, traditions, and laws. Patterns of nearness/distance are conveyed and passed down culturally. At the same time, the relationship between nearness and distance is perceived very differently by different people. The compatibility between the protective function of government and the right to freedom of the individual is interrupted during the time of pandemic. Linked to the protective functions of the state is the question of who is considered worth protecting and who not. On the other hand, discussions during the pandemic about restrictions to individual rights and freedom must also examine what the concept of freedom actually means: Does it have to do with egotistically motivated things like selfrealization, lifestyle, consumption choices—or does it have to do with cornerstones of democratic systems such as the right to assemble, freedom of speech, etc.? In the last forty years of neo-liberal politics, freedom has been utilized as a sort of marketing tool. Under the slogan of self-realization, work has been declared to be a form of freedom. This has made individual freedom dependent on selfcapitalization, with the result that freedom has been turned into its opposite. Non-freedom has come to be seen as freedom, or even an expansion on freedom. How we perceive freedom, closeness, and distance is shaped, among other things, by our socialization. This is related to whether a society is oriented towards the individual, as in Western countries, or towards the community, as for example in Japan.

The risk of being infected by Covid-19 has made us more aware of our bodies' vulnerability. Judith Butler sees vulnerability as a socio-ontological condition of being human, whereby vulnerability is a general and shared condition of life. Butler's idea of this precarious vulnerability is not derived from the body's mortality, but from its sociality, a form of relationships involving mutual dependence, exposure, endangerment, vulnerableness, and defenselessness. The Corona virus has revealed the inevitability of this vulnerability as well as its uneven distribution, thus demonstrating that nothing can guarantee immunity.

Which risks can we still accept, how do we overcome our fear of being hurt and let ourselves come closer? Is it even possible to have a relationship without a certain degree of risk? The expression to fall in love has to do with distance and the risk involved in letting oneself fall.2 When we are in love we are defenseless on all sides: open to love and open to injury. Then again, desire has to do with proximity and distance, the playful staging of absence and presence. In medieval courtly love3 for example, distance, love from afar, was elevated to an ideal. On one hand, distance was the basic requirement for idealization. But on the other, poetic exaggeration created distance, which sustained desire and longing. The moment distance is overcome and a relationship becomes real, longing disappears.

How we dress reflects our longing for freedom or protection, for distance or closeness. What we wear can express social affiliation or disinterest, can can convey social distinction or hierarchical rank. Fashion, design, and elements of style are identity markers signaling specific things, whether tradition or rebellion, complying with social classifications and norms, or freedom from their confines.

In turn, freely and aesthetically questioning conventions is an artistic means for unlocking possibilities. In theory, it is a way to visualize the contradictions in our relationships, both near and far. Materiality and design are means for establishing closeness or avoiding detachment. The tangibility of physical things is electrifying, it give us a sense of the possible effects that different materials can have.

Sabine Winkler
[Translation from German: Cynthia Peck-Kubaczek]

[1] Cf. Peter Weibel, «Virus, Viralität, Virtualität: Wie gerade die erste Ferngesellschaft der Menschheitsgeschichte entsteht» [Virus, virality, virtuality: How the first remote society in human history is emerging right now], in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 20 Mar. 2020.

[2] Cf. Slavoj Žižek, «When you fall in love, you have no idea of what you need. The 'miracle' of love is that you only detect what you need once you have found it.» Referring to the French philosopher Alain Badiou, Žižek compares internet dating to arranged marriages: «In both cases, the risk of falling in love is eliminated. There is no such thing as a case of chance (in the sense of falling in love); the risk of a 'love encounter' is minimized by previous arrangements.» From: Was ist ein Ereignis, 2016.

[3] Today the term «Minne» is usually used to describe courtly love (hôhe minne), the unfulfilled longing of a knight for an unreachable lady (vrouwe), the content of many «Minne» songs. «Minnesang» developed parallel to the establishment of knighthood in the 12th century. The ideals of courtly life and chivalry were presented in literature, but did not correspond to reality. In «Minnesang,» a woman was revered as the knight's mistress, but in reality the status of women was still subordinate to men. In «Minnesang,» hôhe minne was conceived as an austere sort of love. The lyrical self is expressed as being an ideal, reliable and exemplary page who despite the woman's inaccessibility, wishes to remain in her service. From: «Mittelalter entdecken»: www.mittelalter-entdecken.de/wortgeschichten-minne-und-liebe/

Freedom, good gracious …

«Be free, do whatever you want, but be sure to want the right thing!»
(German sociologist in response to the Covid crisis, Feb. 2021)

We have all been thrust face to face with some basic existential questions: Who may I visit or meet? Where can still I go? (Only supermarkets are open, sometimes even parks have been closed.) Where do I have to wear a mask? Will I lose my job? Will my little shop survive? Is the «Covid generation» going to grow up with too little education or opportunities? When is the next lockdown going to be, the next relaxation of the restrictions?

What is the current status of freedom in Europe, in a world being overrun by a virus called SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 and its mutants?

Restrictions of basic rights, bans, emergency measures: they all seem part of an extreme situation, a continuous state of emergency. The return of the state as a strict executive power.

But it is a misapprehension that the media's never-ending focus on the pandemic and its consequences is overriding all other problems. Actually it is acting like a lens, bringing a heightened awareness of all earlier problems: the burning issue of climate change, overwhelming social injustice, racism...

The virus has become an issue of freedom that societies are «struggling» with, not in theory (philosophical discourse, history and political sciences), but in practice—as a worldwide event. More than ever, the question of the day is how much freedom the individual in society should, or may, have. Viruses are not invisible subjects, they just want to multiply where conditions are favorable ... They are «agents» of life due to the situation they create. Sometimes good, but usually bad.

In this phase of the pandemic, the virus is a «monster of unavailability» (Hartmut Rosa) that is greatly restricting our room to maneuver and taking over our everyday life. Since we have to avoid any kind of contact, we have become less free and more distrustful. The threat spreads ghostlike in the air, in aerosols (+ viruses): Don't use an elevator or the subway, stay away from people on the street, hygiene rituals. Zooming is the new «human zoo»...

And the question is always the same: Am I already infected but just don't know it yet?

There is a thought-provoking convergence: A critically ill Covid patient on a ventilator says the same thing as George Floyd, the Black American who was strangled in 2020 by a police officer: «I can't breathe.»

Living together on earth is clearly and physically a matter of shared breathing space. It is where we humans meet all other living beings, as well as the atmosphere and the oceans. The basic element of life, the air we breathe in and out, effects the exchange of O2 and CO2, the metabolic process that makes all living things part of each other and ultimately co-dependent.

The attitude of the world's big players, above all, toward nature, the other life-forms that share our breathing space, is purely exploitative. For them, nature is just an object and a resource. Human hubris has helped produce a «virophile» system: more people, even more mobility, less open space for animals (keyword: zoonosis, the leap of a virus from animals to people), gigantic agricultural industries, overproduction of food, settlements in the last untouched regions...

As crazy as it sounds, it is not surprising that an internationally recognized researcher like Bruno Latour has called for «a parliament of things», that is, practicing fair relationships between all living subjects (the non-human biosphere). In view of Corona and the relative economic standstill (has that really happened? – apart from tourism and airline travel, everyone is continuing along like always, also because stopping completely doesn't help) he advocates globalization being submitted to «protective measures» in a way similar to our having learned new measures for hygiene. We should take the chance now to articulate precisely what should be continued after the Corona period and what should not, what we think should be different ... Establish more networks ...

I'm sitting in my apartment, reading the government's appeal in the newspaper:

«Take care of yourself, stay home.» After 8 p.m. I'm no longer allowed to go out without a reason (barely policed). A latent feeling of imprisonment rises in me. Of course, my thoughts are not as dramatic as those of Heinrich Heine, who wrote while in exile in 1833 in Paris: «The love of freedom is the flower of the dungeon...» – To me the epidemic is making it ever clearer that everything is based on our closeness to the world and the interplay (sorely missed) of relationships. – We cannot ignore the demands that reality is making on us, we cannot act according to Rousseau's motto of freedom: we are not obligated to do what we don't want to do. No, in the context of the pandemic we should follow the explanations of scientists and the regulations of politicians – based on common sense and understanding, not mere obedience. After all, someday we want to have a little more freedom. Let's keep hoping and leave the door open to the improbable, to the astonishing! It is quite likely that freedom has more to do with the collective good than the individual good. People cannot live secluded from one another and have never done so. The chimera of absolute freedom will continue to haunt us. It is something addressed by the anti-hero Victor in S. Beckett's play Eleutheria (Greek: freedom), written in 1947: «It's easy to say: I've always wanted to be free. I don't know why. Nor do I know what it means to be free. I couldn't tell you if you ripped my fingernails out. But I know what it is without words. I've always longed for it, I still long for it. It's the only thing I long for.»

Karin Ruprechter-Prenn Spring 2021
[Translation from German: Cynthia Peck-Kubaczek]