LAURA SARAH DOWDALL
PROXIMIT
PROXIMIT is a tactile, multi-sensory immersive installation and durational performance exploring the cognitive, physical and physiological effects of proximity, intimacy and human connection.
Testing the stretch of our comfort-zone, walking the line between resistance and break-through-
how do we hold, drop, dismantle and reshape our capacity for connection and community?
Conceived as a ritual of reconnection, a premonition of times to come, this intervention was ironically dismantled and prevented during the years of the pandemic and only once performed in Temple Bar Gallery studios in 2019, although the themes hold more urgent since.
PROXIMITY arrives in 2026 not as a historical document but as a live proposition.
Installation with durational performance and public workshop
PROXIMIT
Why This Work?
Proximit is a close exchange between audience and performer inviting interaction, play and cocreation. An analogue engagement in a fragmented and disembodied age, it foregrounds exchange — of ideas, stories, knowledge, histories, experiences. PROXIMITY enacts all of this in its form, content and experience.
The interaction within the space seeks to make visible the invisible architecture of human connection. The 1:1 exchange offers the rare experience of an unhurried, no-words-needed, liberating listening space of connection with another.
Workshops create the foundations and invite engagement and access into this work. The people who attend the workshops feed into the performance and create a sense of connection and relationship that invite them deeper into the work and to visit the gallery for the duration of the installation.
The Installation
At the centre of the space is a mound of shredded paper — accumulated histories, fragments of text, documents, stories. It shifts, collapses, and reforms in response to the people who pass through. The artist works within it wearing yellow gloves: to protect from paper cuts, but mostly as a symbol of care — of the work required to rebuild connections, to clear what holds us back, to release what no longer serves.
There is a row of waiting room chairs with questionnaires on clipboards inviting handwritten or drawn responses to questions about their sense of human connection, that influence the artists dance and engagement with the paper mound as she translates and transmutes story, shape and form into movement and ritual.
The 1:1 space for those who ‘wait’ offers a rare moment of held connection, non-verbal exchange — adapted to each person’s needs this space welcomes our collective expression to connect, to share space, to listen and maybe even dance!
For further details on workshops, installation or any questions please email- laurasarahdowdall@gmail.com
About
Laura Sarah Dowdall is an innovative dance artist creating performance that is engaging, experiential, immersive and permeable to interaction.
She integrates visual art, storytelling, theatre and durational performance into contemporary dance work that is site-specific, staged and on film.
Her practice and choreography focus on researching the performative body in its expanded, transformative and imaginative states, breaking boundaries of hierarchy and expectation, and offering experiences of heightened personal and social awareness.
