| Summary: | The theatricality of urban encounters is above all a theatricality of distances which allow
for the encounter. The absolute “strangeness” of the crowd (Simmel 1997: 74) expressed,
in its purest form, in the absolute proximity of a crowded subway train, does not generally
allow for any movements of approach, but only for nervous hostile reactions and submissive
hypnotic gestures. Neither forced intersections in the course of pedestrians or vehicles, nor
the instantaneous crossing of distances by the technology of live broadcasting and remote
control give birth to places of encounter. In the forced proximity of the metropolitan crowd
which haunted the city of the 19th and 20th century, as well as in the forced proximity of the
tele-presence which haunts the dystopic prospect of the future “omnipolis” (Virilio 1997: 74),
the necessary distance, which is the stage of an encounter between different instances of
otherness, is dissipated.
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