What is a safe place for you?
How would you describe an unsafe place?
When and where do you feel isolated?
How do you control your space?

Agora Phobia (digitalis) is a mobile monument for ‘public isolation’. Travelling since 2000 in city public spaces such as Amsterdam, Paris, New York, Berlin it questions and archives mental images and strategies for being (un)safe and isolated.The project connects social experiences in both the physical and the virtual space creating a hybrid agora.

Project Description:
Agora Phobia (digitalis) invites you in a semi-transparent, inflatable Isolation Pillar, in crowded city public spaces. Inside the Isolation Pillar one feels safe within an intimate space; and at the same time, lacking control over the outside, one feels vulnerable. Agora Phobia (digitalis) provides for an isolated communication space in which notions of being inside and being outside are reversible. In the Isolation Pillar is an online computer. You are invited for an online dialogue with someone who lives isolated somewhere else, such as someone who has been living in prison, someone who lives in a cloister, someone living illegally in the city, a digi-persona, someone suffering from agoraphobia - who we invite as specialists. Each dialogue is published on www.agora-phobia-digitalis.org and becomes part of an archive of chat-sheets, performances and installations. The website also offers the opportunity to participate at home by monologue.
Each dialogue connection is set up by the artists, in collaboration with assistants; creating a social network for each specific city. On location the performance is hosted by the artists.

SHOWS AGORA PHOBIA (DIGITALIS):
2003 Eyebeam New York, USA
         curator Benjamin Weil.
2004 Villette Numerique Paris, France
         curator Benjamin Weil.
2003 SKOR / City of Utrecht, NL
         Exhibition: Parasite Paradise.
2001 Artfair and Podewil Berlin, Germany
         curator Wilhelm Grosz.
2004 MUU Galleria Helsinki, Finland
         Exhibition: 'Direct exposure'.
2007 www.Volkskrant.nl/oog,
         curator Nannette Hoogslag.
2000 Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NL
         Exhibition 'Municipal Acquisitions'.
2002 Foundation DasArts.
2007 CBK Amsterdam, NL
         curator: Maryla Nienhuis.
2000 De Appel Amsterdam, NL
         curator Zdenka Badovinac - Exhibition: 'Unlimited.nl#3'.

In collaboration with:
Rens Bouma / imaginAiR - design inflatable; Robert Steijn; Jellichje Reijnders.

With generous support by:
Mondriaanfoundation, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Fund for Art design and Architecture, National Fund for the Performing Arts, Foundation DasArts, Prince Bernhard Culture Fund, Berliner Kulturveranstaltungs-GmbH Berlin, [NES]theaters, the Dutch Ambassy in Germany and Paris; Dutch consulat in New York (USA). Website hosting donated by Driebit Amsterdam, www.driebit.nl