221the spatial requirements made by movements, which resem-
ble, for example, the impression left behind in a plastic mass.
Oskar Schlemmer’s ‘space lines’ or the movement circles of
Rudolf von Laban’s ‘Kinesphere’ register the movement ra-
dii of the limbs as characteristic spatial figures. The required
volume does not always extend all the way to the walls of
the surrounding space (> interior). But the steps and forms of
staircases are like matrices for the body that ascends or de-
scends; an armchair represents the negative form of the seated
posture; and niches in walls or in furniture often resemble
negative impressions of the space of reach. In perception, we
begin by groping around a room via visual contact, anticipat-
ing possibilities for movement and storing this information in
bodily movement.
That which we experience as our personal sphere, how-
ever, extends beyond the boundaries of our skin, reaching out
beyond the limits of the body. We perceive our own clothing,
for example, as belonging to our bodies (> body), and expand
this periphery by means of prostheses or instruments, even
the exterior of a car when driving. In perception, to begin
with, our personal space extends as far as the reach of the
senses. With its point of departure in the space of the body,
it extends (> extension) all the way to objects towards which
we turn, and is correspondingly extended and oriented in
various directions. We not only extend the > gaze towards ob-
jects, but encompass them with our personal space, so that as
Medard Boss has pointed out, ‘not even the slightest per-
ception of anything at all would be possible (...) were I not
actually in contact, as the receiver, with the perceived object
beforehand’ (1975, 245).
Yet personal space exists for us independently of mo-
mentary perception, as an ‘I-space’ that is delimited from an
‘around-space’, as Karlfried von Dürckheim expressed this
with reference to the home: ‘In the home, we experience our-
selves as being closed off in relation to the outside, and just as
we are by ourselves when we are at home, whoever enters our