July 2024 at ACEC Gebouw Apeldoorn
Tableau

Dear Y. is an attempt to think about what a relational practice can be. The Tableau is centered around the letter written to Y. , which is being folded into itself.

Dear Y.,

I am looking at the score TOUCH POEM FOR GROUP OF PEOPLE, that you wrote supposedly in the winter 1963. I printed it out in some shop, for a tenner, because it touched something in me and I wanted to bring it into my life physically. I had it laying in my studio for a while, unable to conclude. Here it was laying on my desk, I assembled dfferent objects on it, re-assembled, took everything down, to again re-assemble. Reconstruct a construction. What defines a group of people to a group? How many people make a group? The score that you wrote says “touch each other.” What defines a touch? What do you mean with a touch? Which word can describe how a touch feels? W.B. calls this “being punctuated”, as if it would hurt, a touch goes through the skin, somehow. It is a feeling. A feeling of understanding, of togetherness, some slight relief, and the knowledge in the depth of the body of relating to something, someone, somehow. A touch creates a group. To be touched along a stranger, makes them your complicit, creates a bond out of the thinnest air.
Actually, I am also afraid of being touched, being touched in public. I struggle with “letting myself go”, struggle with the uncertainty before. What if I won’t be touched? What if I am touched too much and can’t control myself anymore? Either I fall or I don’t. I think that is not a unique feeling, but universal. To touch each other, suggests being honest. To accept one’s own and other’s vulnerability. Any vulnerability is unlike the other. A diOerent thinness or thickness. I would not like to use the picture of glass as a metaphor for vulnerability, but rather think of it as some slime or molding paste, that can take any shape, it’s soft and flexible. It is not broken, when cut through and can be remolded.

Why am I thinking of getting hurt when thinking of touch? Your score doesn’t elaborate further on how to touch. Is the score itself the touch, a speculation on touches? In my work I want to initiate moments of touch, moments to be touched, and moments to touch. Everything revolves around the question, on how to come together, in a physical but more metaphorical way. A touch is a notion of care and acts subversively. A touch is the social in society. A touch is the glue in between. A touch is a yarn in a fabric. A score is an instruction, suggests a possible act, a way of doing something accordingly. A score is a draft to be followed. In the field of music, a score or rather a notation holds the orchestra together, makes sure every sound, no matter if in harmony or not, is planned. Every sound is supposed to sound a certain way. Safe and Sound. I wonder, how would your score sound being read as a notation? Why do I think about a silent whisper?

A score becomes interesting, when being not specific, not precise, suggesting a speculation. What if? What if, What if, What if? What if it sounds like that ,that it is not supposed to sound like? What you suggest in the winter 1963 is present up until today, summer 2024. Even in summer, freed from winter blues, I am looooooonging for touches. 61 years later your score touches me, because there is a lack of it. I think, I assume, you knew back then that this is a score, that occupies human beings, as long as they are a being, or even when they continue existing in memories. I am thinking about acting out politics of friendliness, or rather kindness through my work. How can I invite you, to be touched?

Yours, F.

P.S.