Distant Thoughts challenges you to rethink your connection to others. In this experience, we invite you to dial a phone number. Do this from a quiet place so that you are not distracted by your surroundings.

You will be paired by phone with someone you have not met before. It's not that scary, we lead you step by step through the conversation via a script, which gives you the feeling of a ritual. The conversation leads you through a personal experience to the past, present and future. Distant Thoughts is a work of art in which up to 500 people can be seen individually, but also together.

Building Conversation and affect lab cooperated for this large-scale version of the dialogical artwork Distant Thoughts funded by STRP. With this next step in the development of the work, we want to cross boundaries and reach out to a larger international group of participants. People from different places and time zones can join this very personal and collective experience.

Building Conversation is a platform for Dialogical Art, which concentrates on the meeting of art, conversation, and society. In the dialogical art movement, which came into being in the 1970s, the conversation itself is presented as a work of art. Drawing on this politically engaged artistic practice Building Conversation develops performances inspired by existing conversational practices from all over the world.

affect lab is a creative studio and cultural insights practice run by Natalie Dixon and Klasien van de Zandschulp. The lab shifts perspectives through community-based research, technology and storytelling. This project was realised in collaboration with creative technologist Arjan Scherpenisse.