Records of touch (2021)

Records of touch is an artistic collaboration between fine artist/performer/director Veera Kopsala (FIN) and dancer/choreographer Katrien van der Velden (DK).

Our project is inspired by the book The Eyes of the Skin by the Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa. In his book he examines and criticizes the dominance of the sense of sight in the western world and how this has created a distance to the sense of touch: everything that can be felt with the body, that creates emotional identification and which engages and integrates us with the world.

Our project investigates the sense of touch with body and voice as the starting point. Our practise circulates around voice and breathwork, meditative and/or physical scores and durational improvisations, that allow us to open our senses and enter deeper states of consciousness. We work with tactile sensations and emotions that touch evokes within us. By building trust we are able to reach intimate states, allow playfulness and have a rich and profound contact between each other and the audience. We are working at the interface between pleasure, feelings of discomfort and awkwardness and we use them to take fictional situations forward safely. We have a strong cross-disciplinary approach to performing arts and are not afraid to question conventions and existing structures within our professional field of working.

Work were granted by Statens Kunstfond / The Danish Arts Foundation and Taike

Pictures: Saana Volanen