Are You There
A Journey Through Long Distance Communication Media
( Jestes Tam - A Journey Through Long Distance Communication Media )

Aïlien Reyns
2016 - 22 min - Couleur - Belgique

Aïlien Reyns was selected for a residency at Laznia, Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdansk, based on her project proposal "Jestes Tam" (Are You There).
During her three-month residency, she did research on how the portrait of the absent family member -who migrated for economic reasons- is transformed through the use of digital communication media, more specific Skype.
Especially zooming in on how an intimate contact can be made through this contemporary communication medium and how the digital medium enables or transforms our sense of presence of the other.
In order to put this contemporary form of long distance communication in a broader historical context, she researched written long distance communication between parents and their children from the first wave of migration shortly after 1989.
Both the contemporary digital communication, as well as the letters ordinary people used to write to each other rarely are preserved or picked up as valuable historical documents. In "Jestes Tam" (Are You There) both these vanishing forms of communicative culture will be given a place through dialogue and comparison.