An Atlas of Absence, 2020. Online meeting performance, 11’ 22”. Summer Mei Ling Lee and Laura Boles Faw.
Technology was supposed to connect us. The dominant modality for communication and connection during this pandemic era is the digital screen. In this work, collaborators Laura Boles Faw and Summer Mei Ling Lee continue their ongoing series addressing distance and longing that increasingly figures into this heightened moment. Through the Zoom platform, they host an encounter in which guests to the “meeting” confront the artists grappling with the boundaries of absence and presence, here and there, time and the infinite through an arch of emotions and strategies ranging from coincidence to confusion. Through this work, they ask if we can meaningfully meet in a place that documents the deprivation of being together without altering our understanding of closeness and connection.