Touching
The world and our bodies constantly prove to be alive and exceed our abilities to express the nature of the experience in language.
In my research and artistic practice, I attend to movement, choreography, as well as questions of embodiment, and communication through the expanded idea of touching and being in touch.
In my research ('Embodied Communication - attending to the modes of touch' Linz, 2017), I examined how the senses and our perception evolve and grow in and out of our skin allowing us to stay in connection with ourselves and the world. The origins of senses itself challenge the division we make between them and prove plasticity of the body and its ability to adapt and respond. It implies extending the body in ways which also questions empty, individual space without taking away one's agency and potential to take action (re-thinking individual) - on levels of movement practice, in artistic processes generating content, as well as in political discourse surrounding the body.
Learning from the sense of touch, the first sense we develop - the mother of our senses - allows us to examine the world without a hard division between the inner/outer, underlining the intersubjectivity and the active nature of perception and at the same time placing the question of consciousness out of the brain into the very interaction between our bodies and the world.
Working with modalities of touch and expanding the very idea of what touching means challenges the notions of body and mind understood as separate and eventually highlights the power of the touching (also) understood as the affect, the love, and the care. It recognizes and empowers them as physical processes and strategies necessary for growth, maintaining health and survival and constantly reminds us about the necessity to question what's seen as established and accepted as 'the natural'.
With all its gentle powers touching ask us to always challenge the knowledge and the paradigms defining our bodies and the world we live in, while constantly reviewing our history and re-thinking our futures.
