Welcome to the Lexicon of Touch

This is an invitation.
An invitation to experiment. To notice. To expand how we connect, with the world, with others, and with ourselves, through touch.

We often think with words. Speak in them. Organize life around them.
But what happens when we shift our attention to the skin, the space between two bodies?
Can touch become its own kind of language?

This project began as a choreographic exploration: a way of moving, feeling and relating beyond the verbal. Working with dancers, friends, and collaborators, I explored how language and touch inform one another, how every word can ripple through the body and how every touch can carry meaning.

Now, I’m sharing one of the exercises that emerged from this work: Expand Your Touches. It’s simple. It’s open. It’s playful. And it’s serious, too, because the ways we touch are never neutral. They shape how we relate, how we care and how we live together.

Your task is to create new kinds of touch. You’ll document your experiment in a short video and a few words, and send it to me through the form below. From your responses, I’ll build an evolving Lexicon of Touch, a growing collection of gestures, sensations and ways of knowing that go beyond words.

Some of these contributions will be selected for a film and publication.

This is for anyone. You don’t need to be a dancer. You don’t need to be an artist. You just need a body (which you already have) and a little curiosity.

Try the assignment below. And let me know what you find.

-X-

Clarinde


ASSIGNMENT: 
Take a piece of paper and fold it in half. Lay it in front of you with the fold (spine) on the right side.

On the left side of the paper, write 10 different ways to touch.
Examples might include: pressing, grazing, tapping, squeezing, hovering, cradling...

Now, turn the paper around so your writing is on the back side and the fold is now on the left side.

On this new left side, write 10 different qualities.
These could be adjectives like: hesitant, firm, curious, slow, frantic, tender…

Open the paper again.
Now connect each touch with the quality that shares the same number (Touch #1 with Quality #1, and so on).

These pairs form new, specific types of touch like: “hovering tenderly” or “squeezing frantically.”

Choose one of these new touch-quality combinations.

Engage with an object, an animal, a place, or a person through this mode of touching.
Or, look around you for something, an object, an animal, a place or a person, that clearly represents this kind of touch for you, even without moving.


DOCUMENTATION:
Take a video between 30 seconds and 8 minutes of yourself performing this touch. Maybe you’re touching your cup of coffee, a sandcastle or the neighbor’s cat. You don’t have to include your whole body in the video, but if you feel like it, why not?

Another way to document it: is there something in your surroundings that clearly represents this kind of touch? Even if the touch doesn’t involve movement, still make a video. Maybe it’s just how your favorite poster touches the wall. Your video should include a bit of the surrounding area and be taken straight-on. Make the video with your phone, no high quality needed. Upload them to the link below called “FORM”.

You’ll also be asked to write a short caption (just a sentence or two) about how the touch made you feel or how it changed your experience of the thing you touched. Maybe it surprised you. Maybe it made something ordinary feel new.


touch here to contribute to the Lexicon

 

                                                                                                         
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