Touch, fold, touch, touch: How objects and humans perform ‘being-with’ in performance art

Abstract

This thesis is an exploration of the relation between objects and humans within the performance artwork Touch, fold, touch, touch (2022) by artist Lola Schot. The performance entails nine human performers who move with and touch objects Schot created. These objects are abstract sculptures that most resemble colorful stones, each with their own particular shape, size, weight, texture and color. The human performers are asked to move with and touch the objects in a loving and explorative way, to find out how their own body ‘fits’ aside and in the object’s body. When interviewed, the human performers explain that during this process, they felt that the objects’ shapes, weight, size, temperature and texture made them move and touch in certain ways. The performance manifests a new and challenging way of relating to nonhumans, which is linked in this research to the concept of being-with, as theorized by Donna Haraway. This concept helps Haraway to propose to live together with nonhumans in an inclusive way, in the middle of a society with ecological problems. To explore how the objects in Touch, fold, touch, touch perform interactivity and closeness to human performers, this research focuses on the question ‘How do human and object performers in Lola Schot’s artwork Touch, fold, touch, touch (2022) together manifest a relationship of being-with?’ To answer this question, the human performers that took part in the performance were interviewed about their physical and mental experiences. The outcomes were analyzed relationally, by using three core analyzing-concepts that help to discover to what extend the artwork is part of Haraway’s being-with world. These three concepts are: touch, affect and agency. Each concept is used to analyze the artwork through a specific lens and helps to investigate the relationship between the object performers and human performers. Throughout this thesis objects and humans are both called performers, since the hypothesis is that the objects to a certain extent influence the development of the performance, in the way they shape the human performers’ approaches that they perform to the objects. This thesis concludes that the performance Touch, fold, touch, touch is a fragmented and semi-theatrical example of ‘being-with’ and can be seen as an open space to practice being-with objects.