Catalogue essay by Lynn Savery

Alone in her apartment one day not long after the death of her husband John and her daughter Quintana, the writer Joan Didion contemplated the agony of surviving everyone she loved and observed that nothing was important but the feeling of connection. It is said that we live in the era of connection even hyperconnection but while the digital revolution shrinks time and space allowing us to connect to anyone in the world more rapidly, the need to connect is hard-wired into our nervous systems. It is this need that drives us to connect through new technology. Artists Sarina Lirosi and Anat Cossen play spontaneously and freely with this new technology and the idea of connection. While travelling on separate continents, the artists sent each other a text message every day for a month and in turn, interpreted each other’s texts with a photographic image. The words and images are very personal and wander from one topic to another but the digressions and pauses serve to heighten our awareness of the interconnectedness of everything, people, places, space and time. They also articulate something of the oscillation between intimacy and distance in relationships, images and communications associated with the digital age. Although many artists use digital technology, few reflect on the question of how we experience and are altered by it as Sarina and Anat do here.