Addicted to the Pleasures of the Skin
2019
Interactive installation and performance
¨Our bodies are resistances – to ourselves, to each other, resistances to knowledge, to language, to touch, as well as to ignorance, to being touched, to being meaningful, to being there, to being as such. Touching the limit, our bodies touch each other and themselves, questioning the boundaries of what it means to touch and be touched, to live together, to live apart, to belong, to exclude¨.
Horacio Ferrer
The meaning
In the act of understanding the outside world, humans need relate to an other in order to learn; every one of the five senses is triggered by an external force: the eye contemplates an outside form, the ear hears the stir of sound, the nose is only awakened by a smell, the tonge never tastes the tasteless, while skin requires direct touch-- only direct con-tact generates its awareness.
Once con-tact is felt, the endless state of desire of human skin begins. How far are we willing to go for its pleasures? Pleasure which is aroused with a light an easy touch, yet once felt, we want more, to then succumb, giving up breath if needed to sustain pleasurable touch.
The piece
This interactive installation uses water as a media to allow the skin to feel its touch. The contact of skin with the water initiates a series of light and sound effects. Initially, the sense of touch is lightly aroused: meanings, fantasies, and desires start to open up. The longer the performer deepens his/her con-tact within water the more the effects grow and develop.
In collaboration with Marcela Correa and Israel López.
Dancers: Edith Buttingsrud Pedersen, Annuka Hirvonen
Video: Alexander Windner Lieberman
Laborgras - Berlin.