Touch Hunger
‘Touch Hunger’ is a participatory live art show about queering touch in a pandemic, presented and performed by Ali Hannon and myself at the Friends Meeting House for Brighton Fringe in 2021. This is a collaboration informed by two spoken word pieces written in response to our own touch hunger. It has both live and remote iterations. The first version was created for an online event run by Islington Mill in Salford called “Tender Hotel” in February 2021 and we presented it online at ‘Sentient Performativities’ conference at Dartington Hall in June 2022.
Our questions during the pandemic were: how might we queer touch and expand our sensory bandwidth during this time? Are there other sensations which have arisen or which we can cultivate in lieu of the touch of others, what ‘more than human’ entities might we develop a touching relationship with and do these experiences come close to meeting our needs? What is the action that food has on our bodies, on our emotional well-being, what role does metabolism have within trauma? What is or is not nourishing for our systems? This project explores the edges of our bodies in relation to others, the screen, the food we ingest and our microbiome. And whilst touch restrictions have lifted there’s still a charge around it, and the new ways of engaging remotely which emerged feel like they’re here to stay. So we’re also playing with remote intimacy and the gap of longing within online interaction.
We can deliver this to groups of 6 people online, please get in touch if you would like to book this experience or look at the workshop page for any upcoming events.
We are presenting the act of eating and fermentation here as an exercise in interspecies kinship between ourselves, our food source and microbiome, our gut and emotions and/or trauma,
and it’s purpose in relation to my written piece ‘eggwash’ specifically is to close a healing loop. It’s a relationship which continues beyond the life of the piece as participants continue to monitor then drink their ferment over subsequent days. I have a desire to keep people regulated, embodied and connected as much as possible, so participants are in touch with natural, tactile, fragrant or analogue materials for most of this workshop whilst also being engaged with us and/or each other onscreen.
“I talked to lots of people about yours and Ali’s piece, it was so special...felt like one of the few online performance experiences I’ve had with online work where the makers made genuine performative magic out of the platform and it’s conditions, and a sense of connection that was unique to that situation. Really got me thinking. Thank you so much for inviting me into it.”
E.Mallin Parry. Trans*disciplinary artist, designer & performance-maker.
“I loved your work and event! Both of you were great and together as well. your meditation/story/text is great and the sensory side was weird in a way that I like. I loved the thinking / writing that flowed from your experience too. In fact the whole thing was fascinating”
Cat Jones. Interdisciplinary artist, writer, researcher