Same Difference

Same Difference is an immersive mixed-media installation and digital performance examining themes of identity and belonging. Led by David Mesiha, the piece utilizes mirrors, immersive projection and surround sound to invite audiences into ever shifting cognitive and spacial perspectives.

Drawing on the experiences of immigrants and refugees, the piece invites audiences to deconstruct perceptions of identities and to explore the tensions between individuality through difference and belonging through sameness. How much sameness and difference do we need to feel like we belong?

Same Difference employs unique two-way mirrors, immersive projection and surround sound to provide an ever-changing environment. Audiences are invited to walk around, sit or lay down as they see fit; their chosen vantage point radically changes what they can see, hear and perceive. At times an audience member may see their own reflection in a mirror, a projection of their own face or that image intermingled with images of others within the space.

“As an immigrant I have often been aware that I perpetually exist in-between worlds, cultures, languages and spaces never fully belonging to or feeling whole within one space or another. I wondered if identity is essentially characterized in difference. Same Difference evolved as my pursuit to understand how we evolve a sense of self and belonging. The experience is a meditation on a sense of fracturing that emerges when we exist in-between spaces.”

— David Mesiha

Same Difference builds on David Mesiha’s decade-long collaboration with Theatre Conspiracy experiments in documentary, installation and participatory work. The design language builds upon work done as co-creator with Parjad Sharifi on Leaky Heaven’t Project (X) and as co-creator of Theatre Conspiracy’s Foreign Radical.