At a Touching Distance​

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Exhibition and performance

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This exhibition presented my four-year PhD research project exploring how creative practice can engage people with their sense of touch at a distance.

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Touch is a basic part of being human. It supports our emotional well-being, physical health and sense of connection to others. Yet not everyone has equal access to touch. In recent years, opportunities for physical contact have become more limited, shaped by changes such as digital communication and the COVID-19 pandemic. Some people may also choose not to, or may be unable to, engage in direct touch due to personal boundaries, sensory sensitivities or cultural reasons.

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Even so, touch remains important. This raises the question: how might it be experienced differently? While new technologies can simulate touch, they often focus on physical sensation and overlook its emotional and relational qualities. This research explores how creative practice can offer new ways of experiencing touch remotely, as something felt, shared and embodied, even across distance.

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THE RESEARCH

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Developed through Practice-as-Research and informed by co-creation and qualitative inquiry, the project unfolds across three interconnected case studies:

• Be(in)g Touch
  Guided audio-recordings designed for domestic settings, inviting participants to engage with touch through listening and imagination.

• Until We Meet
  Site-specific audio experiences in outdoor public space, exploring how remote touch might be intensified through environment, movement and more-than-human encounters.

• Audio-touch snacks
  A co-creative project with people living with chronic pain, co-developing touch-focused audio-recordings through shared lived experience.

Each project builds on the last, forming an iterative exploration of how touch can be mediated and shared across distance.

 

 

THE EXHIBITION

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This exhibition offers insight into the development of Until We Meet and Audio-touch snacks, alongside a film and a selection of process materials.

You are invited to:

• listen to audio-recordings created as part of the research

• encounter field notes, rehearsal documentation and reflections

• engage with traces of past performances

• experience participants responses to audio-recordings

Some works invite direct experience. Others remain as documentation - fragments of what has taken place.

This exhibition does not aim to recreate past events. Instead, it opens a space for your own experience within their framework, where touch unfolds across time and space.

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Shown at Birmingham Printworks and London Temporary Art Gallery.

 

CREDITS

PhD Researcher
Greta Gauhe

 

Collaborating Artists
Deborah Di Meglio
Hannah Adams
Andy Trewrem
Flavien Cornilleau
Johanna Merceron
Marta Stepien

 

Supervisors
Emma Meehan
Rosa Cisneros

 

Institution
Coventry University
Centre for Dance Research

Funding
Midlands4Cities