The Promise of Touch

made with Motive Colloquies, Commissioned by Centre Pompidou

The performance is a conceptual duet between a body and its environment, the puppeteer and the mechanical puppet.

The first part of the performance is inspired by Bacon’s Three Figures in a Room – lonely figures, distorted, contorted and melting. Gradually, the disposition of the solo body changes as physical contact with the puppet is tempted.

The second half of the piece takes inspiration from Pablo Picasso’s Femmes devant la mer. It is the only work in the room that is clearly composed of more than one body - two nudes sit very closely but never touch, they have lost connection.The journey of the performer depicts the fragmented emotional process of being isolated to having the promise of touch.

Previous show

Premiere: 23 June 2011, Jeudi at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

Credits

This project is a collaboration with architects Enrique Ramos, Miriam Dall'Igna, Ciriaco Castro & Ruairi Glynn (MSc Adaptive Architecture & Computation at the Bartlett School of Architecture), puppeteer Sigridur Reynisdottir (Central School of Speech and Drama), movement director Nicholas Waters (CSSD) and curator Josef Kelly (Tate Liverpool).