Proximity Festival is the first one-on-one intimate performance platform of its kind.
Based in Perth Western Australia, Proximity is a national artist platform known for commissioning unique intimate experiences for audiences of one at a time.
Each year Proximity takes over a venue in its entirety and invite artists from all disciplines to re-purpose buildings and seek out alternative uses for hidden, forgotten or negative spaces. Curatorially the Festival considers works that are experiential, challenge the notion of the audience/performer relationship and embody a sense of creative risk-taking in experiences for an audience of one.
Artists are commissioned to make new works which activate space in unanticipated ways and place the audience at the core of the experience. Since 2012 our audiences have meditated on the breath, planned their remains after death, climbed rooftops in search of love, sat behind the wheel with a learner driver, learned to twerk, discovered what memory tastes like, stargazed, re-mapped their perceptions of boarders, created the sound of the wetlands, disappeared into cinematic imagination, sex talked, and sung karaoke full throttle to Whitney in public galleries.
Proximity was co-founded in 2012 by James Berlyn, Sarah Rowbottam and Kelli McCluskey.
Proximity Festival acknowledges the Whadjuk people of the Noongar Nation.
We recognise their continuing connection to the land, waters and community and pay our respects to elders past, present and future.
Jen Jamieson, Let’s Make Love, 2014 Fremantle Arts Centre Photo: Peter Cheng