This email is an invitation to participate in soft matter, an emerging project that explores a choreographic territory of touch; its ambiguities, sensate world and field of afterglow. Attached is a score( a system for generating, or noticing movement) which I invite you to follow and respond to.
Over the last few months I have noticed how the sensate gestures of my hands, indeed the different ways my hands hold each other, begin to describe an often unconscious choreography of care, of threadings of self and other.These ‘holds’ seem an often subliminal dance in relation to the larger uncertainties, and perhaps these gestures are a way of holding myself in this world at this time. In December I began to record these holds and those of other people through learning to draw these different arrangements of hands in simple line drawings. The process of drawing gives me a visual perspective on something that largely exists as a felt sense.
Currently I am concerned with giving these forms a 3 dimensional and motile form, and I have approached this through learning to stitch people’s hand holds into pairs of cotton gloves. What remains, or is ‘handed on’, is an object, the ‘soft case’ of the hands holding. A choreographic object perhaps, a latent score for the beginning of another kind of dance.
Since the advent of COV-19 I have had to reconsider how I negotiate these intimate exchanges of touch. After a lot of thought and recalibration I have decided to continue this practice remotely for now. At this time I am approaching 25 people, and I hope that you may be willing to participate in this process.
Below is a link to a spoken score. This score invites you to be with the sensations of your hands touching each other. You will need to find some time with yourself, the score will require approximately 30 minutes of uninterrupted time and you will need a camera, or phone, a piece of paper and a pen/cil.
Instructions are on the sound file, please do not listen to the file before you are ready to follow the score.
Many Thanks…any questions, please email me
Yours – in touch
Simon