Close Contact is a gallery installation involving live performance that explores the human experience of touch.
This intergenerational work is a collaboration between Undercurrent and the wider ensemble of associate artists of Undercurrent's Magnetise project 2019-21.
Close Contact builds directly on research by the ensemble, in particular, ‘Nesting’ and the investigation of the home place, restricted mobility, and restricted geography explored through collaborative investigations.
Close Contact comprises 360 works of video, live performance, and sound installation. It asks what it means to reconnect after isolation, and what human touch and human presence mean to us in a digital age where the young are increasingly virtually connected but less likely to have physical or intimate relationships.
It also asks what role our relationship to Earth, landscape, and personal and collective pasts play in this. It explores how our connection to Earth and ability to experience beyond our own skin and time are intrinsically linked to our ability to find footing in an unstable world, allowing us to risk our balance as we reach out to ‘other’ finding paths that continue to value our physical and embodied experiences, and that understand the significance of human touch.