FEATURED

PERFORMANCE
THE HILLS ARE
ALIVE WITH THE
SOUND OF
A-BOMBS
BY DIDIER MORELLI
BECOMING
THROUGH TOUCH
BY AMY SWANSON
CROSSCONTAMINATION
BY JONATHAN MAGAT
RUMBLE
BY ELIZABETH
HUNTER
MAKE EVERYONE
HAPPY/MECHANIC
AL BIRDS
BY A.C. LEONE
GERERE GESTURE
BY LIZ LAURIE
IMAGINARY
MONSTERS
EDDIE GAMBOA
THE TREASURE
HUNT
BY BONNIE BRIGHT
SAY HOW-DO-YOUDO AND SHAKE
HANDS
BY GRACE OVERBEKE

TOUCHY TOPICS: STAY IN

TOUCH
AT PERFORMANCE SENSORIUM
MONDAY, MARCH 2nd at 2:00 pm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: FRIDAY, February 27, 2015

CONTACT: Didier Morelli /(872) 202-8805/ didiermorelli1@hotmail.com
Amy Swanson/(708) 606-1211/ amyswanson2018@u.northwestern.edu
(Evanston, IL) On Monday, March 2, 2015 at 2:00pm, Dr. Ramn
Rivera-Serveras Performance Sensorium seminar will present Touchy
Topics: Stay In Touch, a collection of five-minute performances that
engage the sense of touch and ask how it potentially functions as a fully
embodied and haptic experience.
These nine performances consider the potential of touch as a site to
discuss issues of historical revisionism, contamination, technology,
domestication, and interactivity. We invite audience members to
contemplate the multiple sites and significations of the haptic sense as
these artists experiment with diverse methods of staying in touch
through touchy topics.
Didier Morelli opens the afternoon with The Hills Are Alive With the
Sound of A-Bombs, a five-minute performance that considers the tactile
nature of the American entertainment and defense industries during the
second half of the 20th century. Oscillating between the release of the
cult classic The Sound of Music (1965) and a history of U.S. and U.S.S.R.
nuclear tests (and policies) that occurred on March 2nd, Morelli looks at
the haptic chaos that these events engender when collapsed into one
another.
Amy Swansons Becoming Through Touch questions the potentiality of
contact improvisation to embody Erin Mannings notion of a processual
body that is constantly in a state of becoming and resistive against
confines put in place by state sovereignties. Through self-reflection and
audience participation, Swanson interrogates the possibilities and
limitations of contact improvisation to enable constant becomings and
to gesture towards the ontogenetic status of sensing bodies in
movement.
Human skin and touch in medicalized spaces (hospitals, clinics, and
waiting rooms) is the central focus of Jonathan Magats CrossContamination. Interested in the tactile economies that emerge within
medicalized spaces, Magat examines both the skins protective capacity
and perpetual vulnerability to the threat of germs, bacteria, and
viruses.

Elizabeth Hunter questions what intentions are masked in video

games, building on debates on the impact of violence in video games, in
her interactive Rumble. Audience members are not only recipients but
also instigators in Hunters conflation of violent visuals with gentle
touch, mimicking the haptic feedback produced by Rumble video game
controllers. Hunter troubles notions of intention, outcome, and culpability in her inquiry to discern what
happens if Rumble becomes violent.

In Make Everyone HAPPY/Mechanical Birds, A.C. Leone plays with the relationship between the human
user/owner and the animals and machines they hold in domestic spaces.
-MORELiz Laurie opens the second half of the matinee with Gerere Gesture in which she guides audience
members through manipulated acting exercises to explore how failing to touch does not change the nature
of a gesture. Laurie questions the meaning of incompleteness in the act of touching as well as differences
between reciprocal versus one-sided reaching. Her interactive performance demonstrates that the
direction and intention behind the gesture exist whether or not the distance is ultimately bridged.
Next, Eddie Gamboas Imaginary Monsters asks in what ways certain pieces of literature touch our lives
while calling on us as audiences of art to action. Playing with two performance texts while displaying the
physical ramifications of reading those pieces, Gamboa explores the love for and ethics of performances of
literature.
Audience members are then asked to find one another in the dark through physical contact in Bonnie
Brights The Treasure Hunt. Bright uses Shea Butter to signify the slipperiness of the handhold in fastpaced partner social dancing. Audience members will have the opportunity to communicate through hand
contact, replicating the importance of the ephemeral handhold in social dancing.
Building on the theme of hand contact, Grace Overbeke enlists the help of her audience in her quest to
master the art of the perfect handshake in Say How-Do-You-Do and Shake Hands. She brings to light the
overwhelming amount of advice regarding hand shaking, found both online and in her personal life, in her
participatory performance. Audience members instruct Overbeke as she attempts to transform her touch
into the sign of an eminently qualified professional candidate.
Bringing the afternoon to a close, Kelly Chung presents Eroded Prints, an exploration of the physical
effects of the harmful chemicals that seep into workers bodies. The performance explores the erasure of
the workers imprints and the illegibility of the body by governmental surveillance agencies due to the
erosion and transformation of skin and fingerprint.

Admission to this event is free and open to participants and their guests.
Performance will be followed by a talkback with the artists, as well as a brief discussion of the
pieces cited below.
Clark, Lygia and Yve-Alain Bois. Nostalgia of the Body. October. 69 (Summer 1994): 85-109.
Day, Jon. Please Do Touch. Apollo. (December 2013): 60-65.
Copies of the documents for discussion will be provided upon request.

###

Image #1: Lygia Clark, Hands Dialogue, 1966.

Image #2: Lygia Clark, Ping-pong, 1966.