At the height of a global pandemic when the virtual displaces the corporeal, how do we discover emotional or physical embrace? When words choke, the body orates; when the verbal falls silent, how can facial gesture or the embodied smile compensate?
Artists Mukaddas Mijit and Hussein Smko collaborated to experiment with geographical distance in a disconnected digital world to create intimacy. Utilizing the exemplary tool of pandemic conversation, the Zoom link, these two performing artists challenged themselves to depict the beauty and failure of long-distance communication. Wordless with stolen sounds, EYE TO TIP was an interconnected live performance grappling with the displacement of emotional, physical, and intellectual intimacy in our current society.
The event took place on February 4th, 2021. This program is part of the The Contest in Context: A Virtual Program on Poetry, Allegory, and Uyghur Language Politics virtual event series. The Contest in Context is convened by Haverford College’s Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities, Twelve Gates Arts, and the Philadelphia Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Philadelphia) with input from the artist collective Slavs and Tatars.
