Together being alone

Performance video “Together being alone”.

“Together being alone” is a video performance. The video is about how we can be intimate when we can not be physical together. About sensuousness, skin hunger and loneliness.

Idea, text, voiceover, filming, editing: Sarah Kaurin Jonassen

What if I would invite you to a sensuousness journey, would you take it? Do you want to take it right now? Wherever you are in the world right now, would you join me stopping what you are doing for a few minutes? If you do no already sit, move somewhere so you can sit comfortable. Take a deep breath.

I wanted to explore interaction and sensuousness on a digital platform. Because of Covid-19 I ended up being almost alone in the woods of Norway for several months. That awoke my interest in the slow and sensuous surroundings of nature. Observing the world around me brings me joy. I film and take a lot of pictures of what I find interesting. Before creating this video performance, I had created «When words is not needed». A video performance about nature, silence and slow movements. The performance is without text and only sounds from nature. In this video I wanted to connect text and still create the same connection to natures silence. The text was a mixture of transforming text from «Møtet» to something new, and writings I did sitting in the nature. Being in the nature makes me connect with my darker and dreamier side. Writing in nature, I explored being alone in the woods. This way I wanted to capture the uncomfortable side of silence. 

The swan swimmed side by side me walking around the isle. Together with a distance we took the same path watching each other from the distance. I will walk with you as long as you are not to close I said. I will swim with you as long as you keep your distance the swan said. We kept on moving pretending not to know we were moving together.

Lately I have met two swans, two eagles, two mice, three snakes, many different birds and five different humans.

Writing about being alone in the woods, I connected to loneliness in the situation of Covid-19. The pandemic created loneliness and less physical connection with other human beings. I felt the need for a sensuous connection when we were more on screens. I wanted to bring my interested in skin hunger and human connection from the performance «Møtet». I found it interesting how I could adapt this to a video performance. It is of course paradoxical that my wish to connect is through a video. Because of the circumstances, videos was a possibility to reach out to audience.

How can I create intimacy and sensuousness with lack of physical connection?

How can I create a visual picture of the «I» being together with «you»?
How can «I» make you feel the «you» are in contact with your body with a screen in front of you?
How can «I» touch your skin without being physical there?
How can I talk about sorrow and still create a sensation of that we are together?

I often write in «I» and «you» in my poetic writings. I wanted to use that to create a dialogue between the «I» and the «you» being the audience. I wanted to activate in the mind of the listener as if we were together. That the text could evoke the feeling of being together with a person in the same room.