Soft to the Touch: Performance, Vulnerability, and Entanglement in the Time of Covid
(2021)
author(s): Jennifer Torrence
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
What is the nature of human touch and human contact in contemporary music performance, both in general and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic? In a time when bodies must be kept at several meters distance, what comes of works which explicitly call for closeness, physical contact, and sharing? How might these works be interpreted differently in light of the COVID-19 pandemic? Percussionist and performer Jennifer Torrence reflects on the impact of the pandemic on her artistic practice and on her research as part of the project entitled Performing Precarity, which seeks to explore the inherent risks in performance when musicians and audiences are entangled in codependent structures. In light of COVID-19, this exposition attempts to unfold and trace modes of vulnerability in contemporary music performance—from human contact via eye contact and physical touch, to the precarious negotiation of shared space—and to reflect on how such encounters might breed new understandings and knowledge.
Quiet Observations
(last edited: 2019)
author(s): Åse Huus
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
By looking closer, the normal and ordinary can become something else, something extraordinary, if we pay attention or exercise attention. And, by exercising attention we can get into the ordinary´s simple, but equally complex scope, but then – with a distance – something we no longer stand in the middle of. The artistic research project «Quiet observations» is about reflections related to wonder, relation and proximity. The project has evolved into a research project from a pre-project where the starting point was to research the concept of ambiguity. As I see it, the nature of everyday life and everyday surroundings are elusive and ambiguous, and by its inherent complexity, a source of wonder.
In ambiguity, we can find an indefinite space, a space for speculation and imagination. In this perspective, ambiguity provides a space for creative receptivity, to actively consider multiple interpretations of meaning and reconsider preconceptions.
Dedicated observations can provide proximity to everyday surroundings which make them no longer seem obvious, but rather manifests themselves as source of wonder, abstraction, imagination and daydreaming.
The project has two parallel areas of interest; the field specific perspective is defined as research through editorial design beyond media, and the other perspective is based on educational interest in the design process itself.
Editorial design in this context is understood as the framework and the architecture of how a given content is read and interpreted.