Simon Whitehead

HEI: University of Glasgow

Project Title: Stitching soft matter – Sensate Ecologies of Touch and Affect

 

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What was your research about?

“In this thesis I propose that it is through touch, as humans, that we feel ourselves to belong to a moving Earth. An Earth that in turn touches us and through which we are in ongoing correspondence with matter and all the beings. The thesis navigates through New Materialist thinking emerging from explorations of Quantum field theory by Karen Barad, the distributed agencies across species and matter proposed by Bruno Latour, the processual/dynamic ‘natures’ of objects and modes of touch elaborated by Erin Manning and an ecological field of materials introduced by Tim Ingold. These ideas are harnessed in order to excavate and articulate the field of relations that touch, in all its complexities, touches on. Erin Manning, in The Politics of Touch (2006), a work of more than human affinities, observes that it is ‘through touch that bodies are created’ (2006:55) and subsequently ‘Touch articulates the body, giving it a language through which it can feel the world.’ (2006: 59). It is through these sensate, feeling modalities that the thesis progresses, conceiving touch as event, of worlds ‘coming into being’, a reciprocal space of relations.

The proposition is grounded and extemporised through processes of thinking through both movement and touch. A modelling that (through examination here) is seen to occur through different, mutually illuminating practices and theories, including the influential, expanded choreographic practices of Simone Forti.”

 

“As part of my Practice as Research creation I made a limited edition book.
Stitching soft matter is an artist book featuring performances of touch, drawing, sewing, photography, pandemic touch journals, pull-out scores and a short essay on touch touching itself. This project continued throughout the pandemic and the book became a place to share all the traces, materials and relationships developed during this time.
The book is available on request, it costs £15 +pp.”