The artist Oliver Gather began his four-week spatial research in Loitz an der Peene with interviews with anglers to find out whether personal, intimately appropriated space can also exist outside. Anglers operate at different distances in their specific hunt for fish. Roland Barthes describes three of these distances in his lecture “How to live together”, which he gave at the Collège de France in 1976-77. The proxemic place is that which surrounds us immediately and in close proximity: for example, the desk top and everything we can reach on it when we sit on the desk chair, or the angler’s folding chair into which he nestles and from which he can reach all his utensils.

It is the nest that we make out of our comforter and also the bedside table, which is only an arm’s length from the bed and contains everything we need to survive. The bedside lamp illuminates parts of the refuge, the area of our room in which we live in our own rhythm and establish our little world order. The bay, which lies hidden on the shore and serves as a retreat for the angler in his chair, is both a refuge and a proxemic place. From here, he looks along his fishing rod to his territory, the area he overlooks for his hunt, which reveals the presence of pike, zander or catfish. However, the actual hunting ground is hidden from his view, invisible beneath the surface of the water.