Sacred Distancing

Churches all over the world, not only clubs and restaurants, have also had to deal with distance regulations and contact restrictions in the last 2 years. Albert Coers gathers photos of this in his artist booklet “Sacred Distancing”: they are pictures of coloured stickers, arrows, coloured ribbons or signs indicating paths through church aisles and rows of pews in churches in Berlin, Munich, Venice, Münster, Sanary-sur-Mer and elsewhere.

Churches traditionally see themselves as open to all people, but in practice this has presented challenges for small and large congregations. Anyone who has attended a service or wanted to visit a church in recent years has found themselves in these individual guidance systems which almost seem like artistic installations or choreographies. Questions arise about the relationship between (sacred) space and use, distance and proximity, pragmatics and aesthetics.

The format takes up the series “Small Art Guides” published by Schnell & Steiner.
The booklet is published on the occasion of the exhibition “Immunity” (Galerie der Künstler, Munich), where Coers transferred marking strips for entry and exit through the pews of a church as well as numbered chairs into the gallery space.

An edition is published: copies 1–30 are accompanied by a sheet with three stickers, as they also appear in the photos. The first is pasted on the title and labelled with the number of the copy.

The cover shows the hands of Coers holding the object.

Sacred Distancing 

Albert Coers
Argobooks Berlin, 2021

120×170mm, 48 pp
booklet

ISBN 978–3‑948678–08‑1