Radical proximity is the antidote to digital exhaustion

A new wave of gatherings in Montreal—dinners with strangers, life drawing, and apartment galleries—is bringing back the risk and reward of unscripted human contact.

The Main

The Main

October 28, 2025- Read time: 6 min
Radical proximity is the antidote to digital exhaustion"We’re wired for proximity, but have lost the art of being in it." | Photograph: Russell Katz / @techkatz.studio

It is rare to encounter the unknown in your own home. Our domestic spaces are cocoons of familiarity, containers that hold us against stable backdrops, so we can rest and repeat. 

I noticed something electric had entered my home the moment I seated six strangers in my dining room. Each placed an object at the centre of the marble table: an hourglass counting down time with yellow sand, a ceramic replica of a girl with rosy cheeks, a small wooden shoe with a secret compartment. They’d come over to craft personal stories about these objects, and to read these texts out loud at the end of the soirée.

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