It was an interesting decision to involve the witness element in the work, especially when the piece itself revolved around an intimacy created between two people in an environment that resounded with privacy.

The work itself did start with the intention of being entirely one on one, an experience shared between another and myself, only being made real by the conversations in the world that were to follow each encounter. Yet the further I went with the developments and showings the more the witness felt critical in adding another layer and completing a process.

Having the encounter in the room witnessed became important for several reasons, the first being to give an internal/external experience of the transaction.

This meant essentially a clear experience of what it is to yield and trust.

Why this is so important to witness rests on the basis of this shift, when occurring within us, is mainly corporeal and intuitive. The transaction within the space was silent and immediate not allowing you to reflect in the moment but purely experience these transitions as instinct.

Witnessing this work, this transition from one honest state to another, allows reflection on your own process and reactions within the space. Yet it also allows for Joy. Joy for yourself and for the one you are witnessing, in them achieving the heightened state you just experienced. A commonality shared with them in that moment.

Another constituent is being privy to an authentic exchange between two people. The environment may be highly cultivated yet the states achieved are sincere.

We live in a culture where privacy in these moments of intimacy is paramount, partially due to the extreme public outings we experience everyday through the media and partially due to the delicacy of these feelings. Unadulterated emotional states often leave us feeling self conscious, if witnesses, as they are moments of abandon. They are moments of release when we can be authentic with another. They are primal.

 The opportunity to have this tenuous fine state witnessed seemed vital in creating a full cycle within the work.

Another factor, which is incidental in anything witnessed with this type of framework, is the pleasure we receive from voyeurism. The love we have of watching those who do not know they are being watched.

 I think this is augmented by, but not solely due to, the outing of our private selves into a constantly public arena, yet is also more complex than that. Voyeurism is age old. The pleasure has comes from different places through the ages as we shift from a pleasure of the naughtiness of it, which is still present, to a relief in seeing another in a rested genuine place.

It is the joy of watching a child engaged in problem solving or lovers glimpsed in an alleyway or sorrow at an airport etc and even in these moments we cannot study them. We cannot stare at them to greater understand what is going on. We are fixated with the state of the other as an external refection of our own complex states.

In the witnesses of this work there needed be no shame or shrinking from the fascination at the transaction. You were able to take pleasure in studying the moments as they past with abandon. And again the attendant witnesses you in this state and as this information was relayed to me I became a witness to your pleasure and took joy in it.