A E SUNDSTRÖM

What is it that people cannot explain, when they come out from a cinema? Not knowing what moved them; the music, what was said or how the characters moved on the screen, is confusing, because there is not a single answer to it. Changing requires various factors, to make their job, but it is inevitably your responsibility to allow it to happen. A successful change is the one when you come out with new eyes, experiencing the world in a new fashion. This change, or touch, is not just for well-educated or intellectual people, on the contrary, it is those who let go of their rational thinking who gain most. Ingmar Bergman describes it as putting yourself in a mode of imagination rather than the one of intellect. He says he listens musically to a piece of theatre, being either drama or film, because it entails a rhythm. [1]

Perhaps we are more likely to absorb, like children, if the realm of our inner self is not yet polluted by, not even our own thoughts, but even the ones of others. Even if the haptic, as this type of touch is called, has the ability to change you, it can also trigger feelings inside of you. Measurements of this have been done through galvanic skin response and heart rate. On a more non-scientific level, I believe it is as sufficient as the one mentioned above, to measure it by crying, and suddenly through that, realizing and understanding, as I believe this is how we leave our old self behind and make new space for another.
The haptic could not survive by itself though, being able to touch you, it is relying on other circumstances for you to set up or find. A space has to work with you as well as serve you; a liminal place has the qualities of this. The theatre and drama are good examples of suitable settings for change, based on time and space they exist only in a certain time and in a certain place. But what hopefully comes out of it, goes far beyond this setting. The viewer would let the characters or what is happening in front of him represent something out of his own life – let it all play an embodied model for himself.
In this essay, I will declare for what the haptic is to me, in relation to all the great thinkers who in some way explored this matter. In doing so, I will present the settings in which this change would allow itself to happen, and what depends on it. As I am dealing with the haptic, which is emotions most of all, I will not be able to resist discussing the nature of the human both embracing and neglecting the sides of changing. I will try to make out the complications furthermore concerning these settings, as they are restricted to time and space. Because as soon as we put “walls” around these areas of settings, both physically and theoretically, we say that I belong and you do not. Another great part of and influence of the haptic and the science and history of touch is distance, which I will evaluate closer. Eroticism is one of the areas that handle this to a great extent, in fact what its centre is made out of, alongside the notion of the opposite. It really comes down to what Laura U. Marks describes it as coming close, pulling away and coming up close again. [2]

Finally I will, with this information, hopefully be able to recreate these settings of the haptic and the liminal in order for my own work to be as successful as possible in moving people.

[1] Holmberg, A. The Theatre of Robert Wilson.

[2] Marks, U. L. Touch – Sensuous theory and multisensory media.

The Haptic

The haptic has been looked at, analyzed and applied first of all on the Egyptian art, and its opposite; optical, on the classical Greek art and the late Roman art. Through art historians such as Alois Riegl, Adolf von Hildebrand and Wilhelm Wörringer the research was meant to clarify and distinguish the meanings of both terms, and thus find out what these art movements were all about. They found out that the haptic, also mentioned as near and objective, was a way of seeing, not only with the eye but with the whole body. The optic, was looking at objects from a distance, also known as subjective and tactile. It is easy to get confused between all these notions about something rather abstract. But they were all looking at how art was long ago, not yet infused by the digital era. The art works were sculptures, in form of pottery or other three-dimensional objects, paintings or even architecture. I, myself, have never really been able to find anything that moved me in these areas of art; the haptic is inevitable above all individual. I am not in a position to say whether it depends on how I was raised not looking at art works (although, I cannot tell you if that only would have worked to its advantage either) or a fear to embrace it in order to retain the difference towards those people. I am undeniable a child of my time, memorizing things I have seen and emotions I have gone through, and furthermore recognizing them when they pass my way again.

Reality is looking out from a car window. Music is memory. In search of who I want to be, changing is travelling. Life is writing, a process.

Since the haptic allows you to see inside of yourself, triggered by something exterior, it has already everything to do with your experiences and memories. It reminds me of how I felt that time, and what it felt like feeling it. It reminds me of you leaving me, and that I am alone with everything we had. The haptic is as much a violent visceral feeling, like a stab in your heart, as a smooth one reminding you of something pleasant. A mode of vision, indeed. For me, a tactile touch can almost never be as overwhelming as the same one on the screen, reproduced in front of my own eyes. There, it has the benefits of being accompanied by music or voices talking to you, in a way you did not hear it when you experienced it live. In real life, you were too close, so this is the distance to yourself, viewable to you. “Photography”, a similar art to motion pictures, “is not the image of reality, but one of the means that allow it to be described by rendering it visible.” [3]

Reality is looking out from a car window. Music is memory.
In search of who I want to be, changing is travelling. Life is writing, a process. Laura Marks explains it in the way that “You cannot help but change in the process of interacting.” [4]

That is why I think the mode and the setting, in which the events take place are important when you are trying to touch - to move people. I have worked out an equation concerning the factors hoping to gain the haptic feeling:

The haptic = Touch = Changing = Liminal + Immediacy + Distance

[3] Delaporte, F. Anatomy of the Passions.

[4] Marks, U. L. Touch – Sensuous theory and multisensory media.

The Liminal and the Settings

When you go to see a piece of theatre, meaning drama, music or film, you have already set yourself in a mode of emotion, rather than one of will. This is to enable you to use your imagination for you to take in the impressions you will be given. These impressions will be received directly through your senses into your memories, and furthermore connect with all the parts inside of you, instead of rationalizing them with your conscious. This should work alongside the setting you are in, only enhancing the feeling of self-dissolving and being unaware of both yourself and people around you.

Safe, enough to cry
Safe, enough to lie

A cinema for example, is a dark space, suitable to percept impressions to touch – and thus change you. It is a space to cry in, to let go of yourself; leaving enough space empty inside for the senses to absorb something new, and come out as new. This, could one call a liminal space. It does not have direct contact with the reality or concrete surroundings, neither yourself in all your right. It is the place you are in, more as a state of mind, before having let go of your old self – yet about to enter your new one. This is a great moment. Of course, there are complications concerning changing. With changing being inevitable that someone or something else has the power over you in one of your weakest moments, and to “give up that you are right” [5]

, there is suddenly a shame in it. It is of highest importance that this setting and mode you are in treats you with great delicacy. To be safe, I rank as one of the top liminal factors. Where do I find safety? I feel safe when I feel like I can cry. We wait to until we get home, or lying on our bed – we cry ourselves to sleep. Sleeping as a ritual is liminal. “When you came home, you started to cry, when you woke up, you wanted to die.” [6]

[5] As told to me in a conversation with Brooke, J.

[6] As sung by Brun, A. featuring Matters, S. Little Lights, Duets.

Yes, I know what you mean

When we find ourselves in a safe place, being it internal or external, we require something more in order to be touched. Yet again, it is a responsibility us picture-makers have, being it still or moving, and should treat with great respect towards the viewer, and we could make the most of touching someone. To see myself, and furthermore realize and change, I need to be seen. How can a picture-maker ensure his viewer of this? Something that can be applied to all humans, yet being highly individual, is to let someone know you know what he or she means. This gives great comfort and re-assurance – and thus builds up a self-confidence and strength for the viewer enabling her or him to change. “I suggest that spectatorship is a ‘scene’ in which pleasure, responsibility and trust are negotiated between viewer and film.” [7]

Words should be used to tuck the viewer in, saying the things he or she is dying to hear. In order to enter and change someone else, you must sympathize with him or her. Therefore, the message should be, either silent or spoken – I know what you are about, it is difficult to change, but I am here. I know that I have great respect for someone who knows what my favourite things are.

Translate me, and set me free
Re-locate me, to where I’m bleeding to be
Translate me into colours, or your favourite words
So you can relate to me, when I fly with the birds

“(Robert Wilson) once told an actor to read the text as if he didn’t understand language. There’s so much going on in a line of Shakespeare, that if the actor colours the voice too much, the audience loses too many colours.” [8] Interpreting is indeed translating something into your own colours. A relationship involves respect and trust, also in a relationship between image and viewer. This should result in a freedom for the viewer to translate in his or her own fashion. What is communicated in a successful piece of haptic theatre? To me, changing is moving. I need to be put in a mode of travelling, as a visual symbol for me leaving something behind and moving towards something else. But it does not necessarily mean moving fast, a mind in its most beautiful state – change, deserves for it to go smooth, as if you were enjoying a great meal, and thus it should be relaxing and boring. Writer Tan Lin takes this notion to the extent that he is happy for his readers to fall asleep reading his work. [9]

This should preferably be accompanied by a ‘travelling’ piece of sound. Something with a rhythm, be it breathing, a piano or a choir reaching for some kind of ecstasy. “Where is life the most beautiful? Life is the most beautiful when you’re in a plane or a car going to the place you think is the most beautiful.” [10]

I agree, and I think the best day is the day after the best day, too.

There is so much, to learn
Far more, when we yearn

“Life is served by the ability to come close, pull away, and coming up close again.” [11]

Life is indeed made up of opposite events that are necessary it seems. Too much of what you desire, even if you get it, is going to somehow reduce that desire. Sophie Zelmani describes it accurately: “I want to wake up and find you, I want to wake up and find you, but if it’s true I won’t continue to.” [12]

In order to make this distinction far more stressed, which is often necessary in theatre as it exist in a concentrated form of time, these opposites have to be clear. The distance is only made visible by an immediate nearness.

[7] Marks, U. L. Touch – Sensuous theory and multisensory media.

[8] Holmberg, A. The Theatre of Robert Wilson.

[9] As heard in an interview with Pennsound and Lin, T.

[10] Interview with Scavullo, F. and Weld, T as published in On Beauty.

[11] Marks, U. L. Touch – Sensuous theory and multisensory media.

[12] As sung by Zelmani, S. Truth, Love Affair.

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Bibliography list:

Holmberg, A. (1996) The Theatre of Robert Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Marks, Laura U. (2002) Sensuous theory and multisnesory media. Minneapolis: University of the Minnesota Press.

Delaporte, F. (2008) Anatomy of the Passions. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Anatomie de Passions, 2003, Presses Universitaires de France.

In conversation with Jim Brooke to Anna Sundström. (10.11.09)

Brun, A., featuring Matters, S. (2005) Little Lights. Duets.

Deleuze, G., Guattari, F., A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia. The Athlone Press London, 1988. (Milles Plateaux, volume 2 of Capitalisme et Schizoprenie, Les Edition Minuit, Paris, 1980.)

Iversen, M. (1993) Alois Riegl, art history and theory. Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Interview with Pennsound and Lin, T. (2008) Philadelphia.

Interview with Scavullo, F. and Weld, T. as published in: Scavullo, F. (1976) On Beauty. New York: Random House.

Zelmani, S. (2005) Truth, Love Affair.