Proxemics

the branch of knowledge that deals with the amount of space people feel necessary to set between themselves and others.

In the summer of 2016, Mike McCormick decided to address his performative limitations by composing a set of personalized technical studies for the electric guitar. Exploring the physical and practical distance between him and his instrument encouraged him to examine other “distances” in various aspects of his life. This lead him to compile a collection of saved letters, emails, and electronic messages sent to him from partners with whom he had been previously intimately involved in order to examine the emotional “spaces” he had created in his past.

Spanning more than a decade and a variety of relationships, these correspondences reveal the complex nature of human intimacy – some messages show the unabashed beauty of unconditional love, others reveal the bitterness of heartbreak, and still others expose the volatility of passionate lust.

Proxemic Studies: Volume I was released on Norwegian label Smeik on February 8, 2020.