2019, NL. Short film, textile
Coreography
Proper Intimacy
Human beings are meant to be in physical contact with each other. In our modern world, we simply aren’t getting that contact on a regular basis.We have a huge demand for touch and human contact that we don’t have met. Our supply in our daily lives is dismal. Touch is one of those things that we don’t usually think about actively but it’s really important for our health and happiness. That's because it not only feels lovely but also boosts levels of oxytocin, which is a key hormone for love, happiness, and pair bonding. But despite the benefits, most of us aren’t getting enough non-sexual intimate touch.
"Education, language and public interaction", through these three aspects, this project explores potentials responding to current skin-hunger.
Social Expectation and Education
Should the ways of touch be introduced into educational space and, in this way, to help finding each other's boundaries?
Touch, as the most emotional sense of all, is soft and feminine, and often sexualized. In Middle ages, it’s a usual form to kiss as platonical greeting and as a gesture of trust- even between men. It has, however, been reconsidered since in 19th century scientists suggests that intimacy between men shows more potential being homosexuals. In an invisible way, Social environment change our perspective
for touch. At the same time, “No touch policy” is now introduced into more schools in the UK, with concern of paedophilia. This is a redesigned calisthenics for school in Taiwan. School could introduce ways for kids to learn about touch and their own boundaries.
Civilized Communication
What will it looks like if we develop a language that express deeper emotion through touch?
Trhough inventions of technologies, from printing to social
media, civilized society communicate with mostly sight and sound. In fact ,touch was typed by the scholars as a crude and uncivilized mode of perception. In the sensory scale of “races” created by the natural historian Lorenz Oken, the “civilized” European “eye-man”, who focused on the visual world, was positioned at the top; while the African “skin-man”, who used touch as his primary sensory modality,
at the bottom.
Raising Autonomous
How to create affections and invite touches on our own territories?
Lots of traditional family rituals throughout cultures have invloved touch- such as communal bath in Middle Age and nowadays Japan, social dance. Touch generates feelings of togetherness and trust. However, modern civilized society are facing shift from social tides to individual autonomous. Touch is a sense that includes others- we cannot touch without being touched.