This work was produced and exhibited during a 3-month residency at SomoS Arts, Berlin.
“The body, sensuality and sexuality may at first seem defined by tangibility, by physical contact with oneself and others. Yet when they are represented through other forms such as language, space and sound, these concepts reach further than the physical realm and towards varying directions. At times they reach inward, towards introspective or self-absorbed eroticism, while at other times they may be reproduced, over-layered and oversaturated so as to be moulded into a sense of pleasure designed by mass culture.
Even the notion of “touch” can be approached or deconstructed without physical contact at all, but rather through references that may be just as intense. Roland Barthes in his The Pleasure of the Text views the capacity of writing to exceed the page and reach out towards the reader in a way that suggests that writing itself may desire its reader. He distinguishes between a ‘readerly’ text which is interwoven into mass consumption culture and induces a placating ‘bliss’ in the reader, as opposed to a ‘writerly’ text in which such a pleasure is generated that it interrupts our consciousness. In this way, when written in a powerful manner, the word “touch” may seem to literally leap from the page to tenderly caress she who reads it. Yet the nuances of its touch depend on the delicate interplay between its framing and interpretation.
During Sophie Morrow’s (AU) solo exhibition ‘Touch me Tenderly’, her installation ‘An Intimate Drama’ frames the space for a performance by invited artist-duo Ainsley Tharp and Nathanial Moore (USA). Both pieces deconstruct the body, sexuality, sensuality and their links to broader society in a dynamic similar to Barthes’ readerly/writerly phenomenon. Morrow presents a mixed media installation that emphasizes the eroticism of language through anticipation and suspense. While in the performance ‘Americum’, Tharp and Moore toy with over-glossy consumerist culture, Oedipal complexes and eco-sexuality, questioning the production of pleasure and the untouchable space in-between.”
