Together With Touch is a
live performance that takes place in a
public space. The underlying theme of
Mental Health is explored through the mediums of contemporary dance and live data that drives the music.
This project is part of the
Virtual Artistic Exchange 2021, facilitated by long-standing partner and
bangaloREsidency host
Walkin Studios.
In the course of the pandemic, people have been forced to adapt to a “new normal”. Globally, already deteriorating mental health conditions were subsequently aggravated. Records show that India currently is among the countries with the highest number of suicides in South-east Asia. A recent survey by Suicide Prevention India Foundation (SPIF), a Bengaluru-based organisation, found that suicide ideation, depression and relapses are at an alltime high. Many are struggling with emotional and psychological problems enhanced through isolation and the lack of physical contact. The term “contact”, deriving from the Latin con- and -tangere, “together with touch”, has gained significant urgency in current circumstances.
While physical contact is being radically restricted,
visual artist from Germany Lena Heubusch invites performer and mental health specialist
Avril Stormy Unger, sound engineer
Nikhil Nagaraj and creative coder
Gaurav Singh to converse at the intersection of their practices. Heubusch poses questions such as: How is contact perceived when organisms touch through the means of modern technology? How can we experience a sense of being body in the digital realm?
© Walkin Studios
Avril Stormy Unger will physically respond to sound that is generated by live Twitter data; fed by the popular hashtags concerning mental health.
The performance will take place at
4 p.m. and
6.30 p.m. in
Vega City Mall, Bangalore and will be
live streamed on
publicdomain.garden.
publicdomain.garden is a project conceptualised by
Walkin Studios that explores the changing landscape of public life, and hybridity of the virtual and physical that we live in.
Back
