Touching and Imagining: An Introduction to Tactile Art 9780755603381, 9781780761466

Citation preview

To Edith Clifford Williams

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 5

6/03/2014 10:04 am

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 6

6/03/2014 10:04 am

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. The Mouth of Truth. Italy. Archive of Jan Švankmajer. 2. Jan Švankmajer: Samizdat edition (five copies with tactile cover) Hmat a Imaginace, 1983. 3. Jan Švankmajer: New Eroticism (tactile props from the film Conspirators of Pleasure), 1996. 4. Jan Švankmajer: New Eroticism (tactile props from the film Conspirators of Pleasure), 1996. 5. Jan Švankmajer: Utilitarian Bondage (tactile chair), 1977. 6. Touching is one of our basic needs. If we couldn’t use our sense of touch we would suffer mental deprivation. Under each square centimetre of the tip of our forefinger are 200 nerve endings; they register cold, heat or pain, according to the nerve structure. Archive of Jan Švankmajer. 7. Meissner’s tactile loop magnified by factor of 150. The oval cluster of cells of this loop is one millimetre below the fingertip. The group in the middle represents tactile cells connected to nerve connections. The spiral nerve transmits a signal to the brain where it is identified. Tactile sensations are associated with visual ones that manifest themselves strongly, for instance, in the erotic field. Archive of Jan Švankmajer. 8. Lygia Clark: The I and the You: Cloth–Body–Cloth series, 1960 No. 22353. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of ‘The World of Lygia Clark’ Cultural Association. 9. Jan Švankmajer: A and B: Tablets of elementary structures for studying ‘colour touch’ (synaesthetic tablets). 10. Jan Švankmajer: C. – Mother. 11. Jan Švankmajer: D. – Animal: Two Rorschach tactile tablets. 12. Jan Švankmajer: E. – Way: Tablet of tactile orientation and tactile memory. 13. Jan Švankmajer: Restorer (tactile object), 1974. 14. Restorer at Work (newspaper photograph). Archive of Jan Švankmajer. 15. Jan Švankmajer: Uncovered Object, 1974. 16. Martin Stejskal: Visualized Impression (before the imaginative phase), 1974. Courtesy of Martin Stejskal.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 8

ii xvii xxi xxii xxiv

3

3 5 6 6 6 6 12 13 15 17

6/03/2014 10:04 am

list of illustrations

17. Ten Photographs for Analogical Phase of the Experiment. Archive of Jan Švankmajer. 18. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Ohm Mantra, 1993. 19. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Wooden Spoon, 1978. 20. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Cooking Spoons, 1978. 21. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Boards, 1978. 22. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Boards, 1978 (view from the reverse side). 23. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Tub, 1990. 24. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Lids, 1978. 25. Jan Švankmajer: New Eroticism, 1990. 26. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Rolling Pin, 1990. 27. Jan Švankmajer: New Eroticism, 1990. 28. Jan Švankmajer: Masturbation (tactile object), 1975. 29. Jan Švankmajer: Uncovered Object, 1975. 30. Jan Švankmajer: The ‘Roman’ Ipsation Machine (collage), 1972. 31. Francis Picabia, Parade Amoureuse, 1917. © Francis Picabia/ADAGP. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 32. J. K. Archive of Jiří Koubek. 33. F. D. Archive of František Dryje. 34. G. D. Archive of Gilles Dunant. 35. M. D. Archive of Michel Dubret. 36. V. Archive of Vince. 37. Eva Švankmajerová: Bat (oil), 1970. 38. Salvador Dalí, Hand with Fish (drawing), n.d. © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí/VEGAP. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 39. Jan Švankmajer: Father and Son (stereophotography for two hands), 1994. 40. Illusion (engraving, eighteenth century). Public domain. 41. François Boucher: Le Prélude (engraving, eighteenth century). Public domain. 42. Jan Švankmajer: Touch Your Dreams, 1976. 43. Jan Švankmajer: Dream about Mountain Climbers (uncovered tactile object), 1976. 44. Jan Švankmajer: Dream about Unwashed Dishes (uncovered tactile object), 1976. 45. Jan Švankmajer: Dream Object of Emila Medková, 1986. 46. Jan Švankmajer: Lipstick, 2009. 47. Jan Švankmajer: Imagery-Evoking Spaces – Connections (model), 1978. 48. Jan Švankmajer: Firmly Hold the Mouse, 2009. 49. Jan Švankmajer: Not Dead – Not Alive, 1993. 50. Jan Švankmajer: An Unforgettable Meeting (tactile object for two hands), 1976. 51. Jan Švankmajer: An Unforgettable Meeting, 1976. 52. President Husák and Women (newspaper photograph, Rudé Právo, 1976). Archive of Jan Švankmajer. 53. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Portrait of Mikuláš Medek (casket for monograph), 1979. 54. Valie Export: Tap and Touch Cinema, Oberhausen, 1968. © Valie Export/ VBK. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 55. Ritual Scarification, Congo. Archive of Jan Švankmajer.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 9

ix

23 27 29 29 29 29 30 30 30 31 31 32 33 35 35 36 36 37 37 38 48 50 51 53 53 59 60 64 66 69 72 72 74 75 75 75 77 83 84

6/03/2014 10:04 am

x

Touching and Imagining

56. Jan Van Eyck: Homage to the Lamb (detail), 1432. Public Domain. 57. Jan Van Eyck: Portrait of Arnolfinio Couple (detail), 1434. Public Domain. 58. Pedro de Mena: Crying Virgin Mary, second half of seventeenth century. Public Domain. 59. Pedro de Mena: Crying Madonna, Church of The Holy Martyrs, Malaga. Public Domain. 60. Man Ray: L’énigme d’Isidore Ducasse, 1920. © Man Ray Trust/ADAGP. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 61. Pablo Picasso: Guitar, 1912. © Pablo Picasso/Succession Picasso. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 62. Umberto Boccioni: Fusion of Head and Window, 1912. Public Domain. 63. Gunther Uecker: Object Made from Nails, 1962. © Gunther Uecker/ Bild-Kunst. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 64. Jean Dubuffet: Plastic Art Made from Bath Sponge, 1950. © Jean Dubuffet/ADAGP. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 65. Claes Oldenburg: Soft Washstand, 1966. Vinyl filled with kapok, on metal stand painted with acrylic 55 x 36 x 28 in. Private collection © 1966 Claes Oldenburg. 66. Piero Gilardi: Pumpkin, 1966. Courtesy of Piero Gilardi. 67. Jiří Kolář: A Blind Poem (typed without ribbon), 1962. Courtesy of Jiří Kolář. 68. Jannis Kounellis: Piece Made from Cotton, 1967. © Tate London, 2011. 69. Clifford Williams: Plâtre à Toucher chez De Zayas 1916. Courtesy of Francis M. Naumann (copy of photograph in the Archives of Marius de Zayas in Seville). 70. Ay-O: Tactile Briefcase, 1963. Courtesy of Ay-O. 71. J. H. Kocman: Touch Study of My Surroundings, 1971. Courtesy of J. H. Kocman, 2011. 72. Oscar Dominguez: Decalcomania, 1937. © Oscar Dominguez/ADAGP. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 73. Max Ernst: Frottage, 1925. © Max Ernst/ADAGP. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 74. Salvador Dalí: The Persistence of Memory, 1931. © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí/VEGAP. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 75. Gala Eluard: Object with a Symbolic Function, 1931. Copyright holder unlocatable. 76. Meret Oppenheim: Fur Dinner Suite, 1936. © Meret Oppenheim/Pro Litteris. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 77. Micheline Bounoure: Object, 1959. Courtesy of Gilles Bounoure. 78. Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí: Un Chien Andalou, 1929. Public Domain. 79. Oscar Dominiguez: Arrival from the Old Times, 1936. © Oscar Dominguez/ADAGP. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 80. Salvador Dalí: Tactile Cinema, c. 1930–31. © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí/VEGAP. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 81. Frédérick Kiesler: Twin Touch Test, 1943 (VVV Almanac, No. 2–3). © 2011 Austrian Frédérick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna. 82. Marcel Duchamp. Cover of VVV Almanac (detail). © Marcel Duchamp/ ADAGP. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 10

86 86 86 86 88 88 88 89 89 89 89 90 90 92 97 99 101 101 102 102 102 102 103 103 103 104 104

6/03/2014 10:04 am

list of illustrations

xi

83. Marcel Duchamp: Please Touch, 1947. © Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP. Licensed by Viscopy, 2011. 106 84. Mikuláš Medek: Cranach’s Sur-Lyricism, 1951–52. Courtesy of Mikuláš Medek’s daughter, Eva Kosaková. 107 85. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Alphabet, 1978. 108 86. Jan Švankmajer: Avenger, 1990. 109 87. Jan Švankmajer: Hired Murderer, 1990. 110 88. Jan Švankmajer: The Den, 1990. 110 89. Jan Švankmajer: Found Tactile Object, 1984. 111 90. Jan Švankmajer: A Week in Gesture, 1986. 112 91. Jan Švankmajer: The Way, 1989. 116 92. Jan Švankmajer: Reconstruction of Found and Subsequently Irretrievably 118 Lost Object (based on tactile memory), n.d. 93. Jan Švankmajer: Documentation, 1979. 119 94. Jan Švankmajer: ‘Twin Coloured’ Tactile Collage (sandpaper and fur), 119 1978. 95. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Study, 1979. 120 96. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Study, 1979. 121 97. Jan Švankmajer: Man (tactile collage), 1978. 122 98. Jan Švankmajer: Woman (tactile collage), 1978. 122 99. Jan Švankmajer: Welcoming Touch (tactile collage), 1978. 123 100. Jan Švankmajer: Plucking Out, (realized photograph), 1990. 124 101. Jan Švankmajer: Fossil (realized photograph), 1990. 125 102. Jan Švankmajer: Defense (realized photograph), 1990. 125 103. Eva Švankmajerová and Jan Švankmajer: Dialogue Vision – Touch, 1990: 1–12. 126–131 104. Jan Švankmajer: The Reverse of Touch, (tactile drawing), 1978. 132 105. Jan Švankmajer: Suddenly Elsewhere (tactile drawing), 1978. 132 106. Jan Švankmajer: Superstructure (tactile drawing), 1978. 133 107. Jan Švankmajer: Duel (tactile drawing), 1978. 133 108. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Portrait of Eva Švankmajerová, 1977. 135 109. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Portrait of Vratislav Effenberger (uncovered object), 1978. 137 110. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Portrait of Ludvík Šváb, 1978. 138 111. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Quatrain, 1985. 140 112. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Interpretation of a poem by Benjamin Péret: At the End of the World, 1989. 140 113. Jan Švankmajer: Interpretation of a poem by Vratislav Effenberger: At Night, 1989. 140 114. Jan Švankmajer: Soft – Hard (tactile poem), 1988. 141 115. Jan Švankmajer: Heraclitus’s Poem, 1988. 142 116. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Poem, 1988. 143 117. Jan Švankmajer: Crushing of Walnuts in the Palm, 1990. 144 118. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Poem, 1984. 145 119. Jan Švankmajer: Cunnilingus Game, 1980. 146 120. Jan Švankmajer: Cunnilingus Game, 1980: The aim is to push the ball with the tongue into the hairy hollow as fast as possible. 146 121. Jan Švankmajer: Utilitarianism Under Encirclement, 1989. 147 122. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Poem, 1990. 147

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 11

6/03/2014 10:04 am

xii

Touching and Imagining

123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136.

Jan Švankmajer: Vacations (gesture poem), 1983. Jan Švankmajer: Three Gestures of Anger, 1979. Jan Švankmajer: Destructive Gesture I, 1990. Jan Švankmajer: Destructive Gesture II, 1990. Jan Švankmajer: Animated Gesture, 1990. Jan Švankmajer: The Fall of the House of Usher, 1980. Jan Švankmajer: Scene from the Film Dimensions of Dialogue, 1982. Jan Švankmajer: Puppet of a Woman, 1996. Jan Švankmajer: Puppet of a Man, 1996. Jan Švankmajer: Gesture Marionette, 1990. Jan Švankmajer: Siamese Triplets (marionette), 1990. Jan Švankmajer: Gesture Marionette, 1990. Jan Švankmajer: Please Touch (homage to Marcel Duchamp), 1989. Jan Švankmajer: Dactyloscopy of Desire (tactile homage to René Magritte), 1989. 137. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Novel, 2003. 138. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Poem, 2002. 139. Jan Švankmajer: Tactile Poem, 2002.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 12

148 149 150 150 151 152 154 156 156 157 158 159 165 166 167 170 171

6/03/2014 10:04 am

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book involved collaboration between an author, a translator and an editor who worked together in two languages, across two hemispheres. Such an arrangement was only made possible thanks to another contributor: Pavla Kallistová, Office Manager of Athanor Film Production Company, Prague, who worked tirelessly and with good humour for several years as the linchpin between Jan Švankmajer and the translation team in Australia. Nor could the book have come about without the commitment of Philippa Brewster, our editor at I.B.Tauris, London, whose enthusiasm for the project is sincerely appreciated. Thanks also to Cecile Rault, who skilfully guided the book’s production at I.B.Tauris. Michael Havas played a key role in arranging Stanley Dalby’s initial meeting with Jan Švankmajer in Prague, for which we are grateful. Bruno Solarik, together with Katerina Pinosova, checked the final manuscript in his capacity as Jan Švankmajer’s bilingual proxy, making an invaluable contribution in a fine spirit of friendly colleageality. We extend our appreciation in that regard to all members of the legendary Group of Czech–Slovak Surrealists. We also thank Annie Parkinson for copyediting a complex manuscript, and Lisa Eady and Charles Wong at Post Pre-press for preparing the camera-ready copy. A grant from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), enabled us to pay for the permissions we needed to reproduce artworks in the book. Several people deserve special mention for their assistance in tracking these down: Susanne K. Whitaker, Reference/Collection Development Librarian at the Flower-Sprecher Veterinary Library, Cornell University; Francis M. Naumann of Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York; Mihoko Nishikawa, Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Josephine McGill, Reference Librarian at the Northern Territory Library, Darwin; and Belinda Layton and Georgette Mackay (Head of Licensing) at Viscopy, Sydney. On a shoestring budget, we were enormously helped in our task by the many people who kindly granted us permission to reproduce artworks free of charge. The same applies to Jessica Caban at UTS Legal Services and several volunteer lawyers at the Arts Law Centre of Australia, who answered our general legal queries gratis. For their assistance with all kinds of things linguistic and technical during the project we thank Debra Fried, Kate Gilroy, Susan Howell and Pip Martin. Finally, thank you to the author himself, the incomparable Jan Švankmajer, for allowing us to translate and republish his book.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 13

6/03/2014 10:04 am

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

When I was initially approached to translate Švankmajer’s book on tactile art I agreed to undertake the task with some disquiet. I was familiar with Švankmajer’s films, and some of his artworks and sculptures. However, to translate a largely philosophical work, describing esoteric tactile experiments by a leading European Surrealist, was another thing. After reading several paragraphs I realized that my primary challenge would be to come to terms with the author’s style of writing. Švankmajer is not predisposed to making absolute statements. To describe, to explain the idea or phenomena fully he needs to be very precise because he doesn’t want to misinform or mislead the reader. Consequently he makes much use of qualifying clauses in his prose; that is how he writes. My role as a translator has been to judiciously re-phrase the work to make these vital nuances possible to follow in English, yet to retain his idiosyncratic style. The author’s use of quotation marks, italics and other punctuation I left largely untouched, even though it sometimes seemed strange. The use of tenses, different in the Czech language from English, I had to change, of course. A few sentences I broke up for easier comprehension by English readers. I am grateful to Cathryn Vasseleu for her probing of many details that forced me to go back to the Czech original and re-examine them, particularly to improve the flow of ideas. Translation of a few sections by some of Švankmajer’s Slovak collaborators in the experiments described in the book was an added challenge for me. The Slovak language is very similar to Czech, yet the differences are crucial enough to cause me to seek assistance from a couple of native Slovaks, Judy Dlask and Vladimir Osust. Then there was the intricate decision to make about texts by famous writers, Freud, Marinetti and such. Should I re-translate from the Czech translation of the original German or Italian and so on, or, where there were widely known English translations, should I quote those? The final editorial decision was for the latter. There is no easy, lazy way to translate, there is only a laborious one. This was not the most difficult thing I have done in my life, but it certainly was the most difficult translation I have attempted. Considering that there are just over ten million Czechspeaking inhabitants in that small country, the effort will have been worth it if it opens this consequential work to a much larger English-speaking world of new readers. Stanley Dalby Sydney

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 14

6/03/2014 10:04 am

EDITOR’S PREFACE

Jan Švankmajer is renowned as a Czech Surrealist filmmaker who weaves his material from the dark side of life. As well as using puppets and live actors, Švankmajer transforms the most banal objects and substances into living things in his films, making us believe he can animate anything. Švankmajer also extends filmic experience to include tactile sensation through the communicative powers of touch. Throughout his career Švankmajer has worked in many other media beside cinema: as a scriptwriter, poet, artist, puppet-theatre master, and as a member of the Group of Czech-Slovak Surrealists. In the mid-1970s, Švankmajer began making objects for tactile experimentation with the members of this group. He continued his research from 1974–1983. For seven years during that period he temporarily abandoned film directing after censorship of his work by the then Communist government of Czechoslovakia (now Czech and Slovak Republics). Instead, he studied the nature of tactile phenomena and explored the relationship between imagination and our sense of touch. He wrote a book about his experiments, Hmat a Imaginace [Touch and Imagination], of which he produced five copies in 1983, all with ‘tactile’ covers. Featuring rabbit fur along the spine and a hand shape cut out of sandpaper on the front, these copies circulated as samizdat, that is, works which were clandestinely produced and distributed to evade officially imposed censorship.1 Hmat a Imaginace has now been translated into English by Stanley Dalby, and is published here as Touching and Imagining. Švankmajer’s book is hard to classify. It is not set out systematically, and he says that to regard the text as a programmatic script for his work ‘would be slightly overdoing it’.2 The Surrealist artist aligns his work in general with poetry and alchemy – both arts of metamorphosis. Distilled from psychological experiments on his fellow Surrealists and from Švankmajer’s own childhood experiences, Touching and Imagining is a kind of alchemist’s philosophical treatise, not exact in its course but exactly directed nevertheless. Analogies aside, Švankmajer’s book forms part of his theoretical activity. Researching into the nature of tactile phenomena and the imagination, the results of his experiments bore out something remarkable: the existence of a ‘tactile imagination’ and ‘tactile memory’. Regardless of how it is categorized, his pioneering theoretical work makes a highly original contribution to ways of thinking about the psychical dimensions of touching. Few, if any, other artists’ theoretical works include playful, darkly humorous, occasionally erotic tactile objects, collages, games, poems and scenarios, as Švankmajer’s

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 15

6/03/2014 10:04 am

xvi

Touching and Imagining

book does. These are included neither as illustrative examples nor as a gallery of art objects. Instead, they have an essential function as experiments with which Švankmajer sought to prove that tactile memory and a tactile imagination actually exist. Both, he argues, are prerequisites for the practice of tactile art. Švankmajer first demonstrated this in a game he devised called ‘Restorer’, the purpose of which was to study the extent to which touch is capable of stimulating associative thinking and becoming an imaginative stimulus, as opposed to having a merely identifying or utilitarian function. In Švankmajer’s book, theory and experiment are supplemented by history and archive. Many avant-garde artists and filmmakers have experimented with ‘Tactilism’ (the title of F. T. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto of 1921). Max Ernst, Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Meret Oppenheim and Edith Clifford Williams figure prominently among them. Švankmajer acknowledges their work, and that of many others, in a short anthology of tactile art, including a subchapter devoted to Surrealist exponents. His exemplary collection tracing the development of modernist tactile art also underlines that Czechoslovak Surrealism, developed from Karel Teige’s and Vítězslav Nezval’s Poetism, has roots that are different from but similar to French Surrealism. The circumstances in which the English language edition of Hmat a Imaginace came about are less dramatic than those of its writing. That two Australians were involved is noteworthy, if only because the part-antipodean origin of Touching and Imagining is indicative of the cosmopolitanism of the themes it addresses. The story is a simple one. I cannot read Czech. Intrigued by the few fragments of Hmat a Imaginace that had been translated into English, I asked a translator friend, Stanley Dalby, if he would be interested in translating the whole book into English.3 With some hesitation he agreed, not being certain that he was up to the task of translating Jan Švankmajer’s complex prose. In January 2008, on a visit to Prague, Stanley obtained Švankmajer’s permission to publish the translation, in a meeting arranged by Michael Havas. What a Herculean task Stanley took on. Not only did it involve translating a book written partly in Slovak as well as Czech, and associated texts, into English, but also all correspondence between author and editor (and eventually, publisher) whose respective native language is a mystery to each other. The complete text of Hmat a Imaginace is reproduced here, without revision. I have made only minimal editorial amendments, as has the translator, all directed towards making the text as accessible to English language readers as the process of translation allows. In October 2011 Stanley and I met with Jan Švankmajer in Horní Staňkov, southwestern Bohemia and showed him the manuscript. Bruno Solařik, whom Švankmajer asked to read over it, amended some Czech details, together with Kateřina Pinosová. The images are those in the original book, along with a few more tactile artworks provided by Jan Švankmajer. Stanley Dalby and I are delighted that Švankmajer also wrote a new introduction to this English translation. In addition, three published short pieces are reprinted here (also translated by Dalby). ‘Tactilism’ (1989), one of two that are placed preliminary to the book, and ‘Tactilism Reviewed’ (2003), placed as an afterword, are Švankmajer’s reflections on his experimentation with tactile art.4 Some minor repetition within these texts is inevitable given their similar theme. Both are included, unedited, for their value as documents in which Švankmajer talks about the role tactile memory plays in his films, at intervals spanning thirty years. ‘Touch’ (1994), written by renowned Czech painter, ceramicist and writer, Eva Švankmajerová (Švankmajer’s wife and collaborator until her death in

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 16

6/03/2014 10:04 am

editor’s preface

xvii

2. Samizdat edition (five copies with tactile cover), Hmat a Imaginace, 1983

2005), is also included prior to the main translation, both for its razor-sharp wit and insight, and as an invitation into the book.5 At the time Švankmajer wrote Hmat a Imaginace its Surrealist intentions were recognizable in connection with the history of artistic avant-gardes. Translated into English and republished almost thirty years later, Touching and Imagining will be judged by some readers through the prism of what Surrealism means today. I hope Švankmajer’s treatise on the interconnected communicative powers of touch and imagination will also inspire other forms of interpretation – some perhaps tactile. Cathryn Vasseleu Darwin

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 17

6/03/2014 10:04 am

The seemingly playful basis of Švankmajer’s work is not merely an attempt at sarcasm or negation of negation. The positive aspects are found most clearly in his experimentation with tactile objects. What might appear to be a frivolous game suddenly acquires an intellectual function on a level with a surrealistic phenomenological imagination, approaching the relationship between uncon­ sciousness and emerging consciousness. Vratislav Effenberger, 19796

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 18

6/03/2014 10:04 am

INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDITION

My tactile experimentation began somewhat out of spite. My first tactile object took form shortly after I had to abandon working on the film The Castle of Otranto (1973–9). I actually refused to do a re-shoot to conform to the orders of the management of Krátký Film. Since it was not my first confrontation with censorship after the Soviet occupation, when the ideology became very restrictive, I concluded that effectively I could not make my own films. That situation lasted for seven long years during which I occupied myself with an intensive study of touch in relation to imagination. I turned to a field of creativity that could be regarded as almost an extreme contradiction to the audiovisual film. Without that prohibition, the experimentation described in this book would probably have never happened; so much for the idea that totalitarian systems and censorship act as a brake on original creativity. In a sense they act in exactly the opposite way. To overcome difficulties and to get around prohibitions whips up defiance and subversion, which is inherent in all creativity worth that name; it achieves fine nuances. At that time the Surrealist Group, which Eva and I were members of since 1970, was preoccupied with a theme: Interpretation as Creative Activity. The Group was again languishing in the underground without any chance to publicize itself or to exhibit, and was relegated to isolation and samizdat. We initiated a number of interpretative games on that theme. We wanted to demonstrate the priority of the creative process above the final artefact. We believed that in times when, on the one hand, creativity was commercialized and, on the other, slavishly followed ideology, there was need for some alternative – as radical an alternative as possible. Not just a reaction but an ‘absolute departure’. What we visualized was an interpretative delirium, a trance, a chain reaction in which the ‘artistic artefact’ would dissolve and lose its value. It would become a mere excrement of the creative process. The creative process would gain in basic importance because its realization, its foundation, would be that which carries with it the sense of creation, the therapeutic influence that undermines, that assists survival in this prostituted world. Something that is not possible to misuse ideologically or to turn into cash. Into this group endeavour I brought the game of ‘Restorer’. A banal picture of a restorer at work was the start of an interpretative process and the resulting object comprising waste fragments of reality, furthermore covered by black cloth, could hardly

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 19

6/03/2014 10:04 am

xx

Touching and Imagining

bless itself with the name of ‘artistic artefact’. The meaning was found by uncovering the creative process, unlocking the symbols and analogical connections, in tactile memories from childhood, all of which the group found liberating. Firstly our touch, dulled by manual work, had to be dragged away from utilitarianism and returned to imaginative childhood experiences, to the discoveries of the original world. It is important to bear in mind that if, in today’s world, ‘art’ has any purpose it is to liberate us. Liberate us from the principle of reality, from that pragmatic rope which has regimented us from birth and return us to the principle of pleasure. Repression is not only a product of totalitarian regimes, it is in the foundations of all civilizations (as we know from Sigmund Freud). It starts in earliest childhood: Don’t touch it, phoo, you’ll get dirty, don’t lick your fingers, it’ll make you sick, go and wash yourself, what have you been sticking your fingers into, don’t pick your nose, don’t walk in the mud, let go of it now . . .  Jan Švankmajer Prague

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 20

6/03/2014 10:04 am

TACTILISM

Since the mid-1970s I have busied myself with tactile experimentation. Initially it seemed to be an innocent game. I made an object for a collective tactile experiment concerning interpretation that we were working with at the time in the Surrealist Group. The results were so encouraging that these experiments filled up the entire seven years during which I was not allowed to make my own films. In the early 1980s, when opportunities to make animated films opened up again, I kept wondering how to utilize my tactile ‘experiences’ in them. At first it seemed to be paradoxical. After all, film is, foremost, an audiovisual medium. When I started to work on E. A. Poe’s story ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (one of the conditions of working again on films was that I would not shoot my own themes, but would select some classical fiction) I found myself struggling in a complex world. In Poe’s work I discovered what an enormous role touch played in his psychological studies of pathological behaviour. The

3. New Eroticism (tactile props from the film Conspirators of Pleasure), 1996

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 21

6/03/2014 10:04 am

xxii

Touching and Imagining

4. New Eroticism (tactile props from the film Conspirators of Pleasure), 1996

sense of touch, which we are barely aware of in everyday life, at times of psychic strain becomes hugely amplified (as was shown in my questionnaire on squeamishness). Poe knew this (most likely even experienced it), which is why his stories are teeming with descriptions of tactile sensations. For readers these sensations are second hand, not directly experienced with their own bodies, but the tactile imagination is capable of re-creating them quite intensely. As evidenced by the results of my above-mentioned questionnaire on squeamishness, there exists such a thing as ‘tactile memory’, reaching into the most remote recesses of our childhood. From there it emerges in the form of analogy evoked by the slightest tactile stimulus or tactile fantasy, thereby making ‘tactile art’ communicative. (For instance Goldstein’s neurological case histories, as described by Merleau-Ponty, challenged the belief that touch must always involve direct contact.) Touch played a significant role even in my older films (for instance the emphasis on the detailed structure of close-up film objects), but since the 1980s (The Fall of the House of Usher (1980), Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), The Pendulum, The Pit, and Hope (1983)) I worked deliberately on evoking these neglected or hidden tactile feelings and tried to enrich the emotional arsenal of filmic expression. I became increasingly conscious that to revive the general impoverishment of sensibilities in our civilization the sense of touch can play an important part, as so far it has not been discredited in ‘artistic endeavours’. After all, we have all been seeking the sense of tactile security since our birth, through physical contact with our mothers’ bodies. That was our first tactile contact with the world, before we could see, smell, hear or taste. Jan Švankmajer

1989

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 22

6/03/2014 10:04 am

TOUCH

In certain circumstances people who are in a different time and place can touch each other. Anyone can see with their own eyes that they can touch messages on a piece of paper, on a document or an ordinary letter. The tedious, antiquated, bureaucratic ‘sorting’, ranking of events, of relationships, so futile and dangerous, was meant to purge the mad eroticism of touch; to leave it to the blind. Our judgements, just like the thoughts of our pupils, are censored: ‘No touching!’ We call it ‘education’. After all, there are some who get paid for touching, that is why they are so well paid for it. That is not what the poet meant. Instinctively he was always ready to escape from such a strait jacket. He probably hoped that we would warmly welcome him as a sad child reprimanded for an innocent drawing. Why should he pay? He was simply struggling with human misery, trying to find a way out. We shouldn’t laugh at him, when we can see some among us weaving their own carpets or forcing the weaker ones to do it for them. We touch materials. Have you ever seen women at counters handling rolls of repulsive textiles ‘woven’ by other women (or children)? Not lecherously – that would suggest a different dimension. But greedily. Full of desire. To touch and to hold for a moment. In such places, a sign ‘No touching!’ would be meaningless. Similarly, we are afraid of silence and the absence of some fence along which I ran my finger on my way here. In pleasurable privacy. But you know too, that touching can be so wonderful that its absence is called imprisonment. I won’t hold it against you. All the same, let’s be passionate, yet careful! Eva Švankmajerová 1994

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 23

6/03/2014 10:04 am

5. Utilitarian Bondage (tactile chair), 1977

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 24

6/03/2014 10:04 am

1 INTRODUCTION

Please Touch Marcel Duchamp, 1947 Liberation always comprises of achieving, against degenerate stylistic, cultural and historical customs, against empty philosophy, abstract logic, withered intellect and barren tradition, a forever young, forever regenerating, accessible, honest and truthful vision, which does not violate objects or life but freely surrenders to the fullness of the moment. I can imagine an artist who would correct an occasion of corrupted vision with an appeal to honest touch; liberation means not being afraid of overthrowing the hierarchy of authority and summoning the courage for honest primitivism in times of perverse, false and illusory cultural and artistic complexity. F. X. Šalda, 19011 Our sight is being corrupted on an unimaginable scale. Daily it is drowned and blunted by a flood of the most banal consumerist culture which, aided by television, commercial film and advertising, degrades our visual sensibilities. To force the eyes to ‘stop’, to rest on an object and to enable its comprehension by our visual perceptions, is becoming more difficult with our increasingly superficial powers of observation. Whenever any of our senses have to deal with issues of art, we need to establish favourable conditions for this by freeing a specific sense, or its fundamental capacity, from utilitarian functions. The physical sense, commonly referred to as touch, by its very name implies that its exploitation happens above all with hands, with fingers. Contemporary technological civilization is daily liberating our hands from the coarsest of manual labour, thereby potentially freeing them for ‘aesthetic’ perceptions. The current dilemma facing our tactile sense is either to let it atrophy, as has happened during our evolution as humans, along with other senses which became superfluous (the latest one being the sense of smell), or to cultivate and apply it to functions other than manual labour. It will certainly require development over a long time. It will be a matter of adaptation, but didn’t the eye and the ear have to adapt? Precisely because right now we are standing at practically the zero point of this new function for our sense of touch, I feel justified in believing in a maximally authentic experience of the tactile world within and outside of us.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 1

6/03/2014 10:04 am

2

Touching and Imagining

The physical sense has a special standing among the so-called higher senses. While vision and hearing are plainly objective senses, taste and smell are subjective. Touch is somewhere in the middle, partly objective, partly subjective. While touching, we project a sensation outwardly, outside of us; at the same time we perceive it subjectively, on our skin. It means that touch can play an important role in overcoming the opposition of Object – Subject. Perhaps precisely because touch had, of all senses, the longest utilitarian function it could not for practical reasons become ‘aesthetic’, it retained primarily a certain ‘primitive’ connection with the world. There is also the fact that the physical sense plays one of the most important roles in eroticism. This ‘primitivism’, not yet trivialized by aesthetic codes, and the instinctive experiences of tactile perception, will always throw us back to the deepest layers of our unconscious. Touch could well be the very sense most suitable for the functions of modern art. The fact that up to now touch stood on the sidelines of art history can be put down to its slavery to the mundane, from which it is slowly freeing itself. The experimentation that I am here proposing originated in an interpretative play that I prepared in 1974 for my friends in the Surrealist Group. The results were so thought provoking that, for me, henceforth touch became a potentially revolutionary class of our sensory life, brutally exploited and suppressed, supposedly in the interest of culture and civilization.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 2

6/03/2014 10:04 am

2 BETWEEN UTILITARIANISM AND IMAGINATION

The history of human spirit, as seen through psychoanalytical research, shows that all human needs are comprised firstly of material and utilitarian needs and how the fulfilment of one leads to the fulfilment of the other. Any aesthetic activities first lean towards the utilitarian functions serving practical life (cave paintings, Middle Ages trade skills, folklore) and only later becomes independent of them. Aesthetic activity and impressionability, just like sexuality, comes to life in conjunction with the most important living, physical and working functions. Karel Teige, ‘Poetry for the Five Senses or the Second Manifesto of Poetism’, 19281 6. Touching is one of our basic needs. If we could not use our sense of touch we would suffer mental deprivation. Under each square centimetre of the tip of our forefinger are 200 nerve endings; they register cold, heat or pain according to the nerve structure.

7. Meissner’s tactile loop magnified by factor of 150. The oval cluster of cells of this loop is one millimetre below the fingertip. The group in the middle represents tactile cells connected to nerve connections. The spiral nerve transmits a signal to the brain where it is identified. Tactile sensations are associated with visual ones that manifest themselves strongly, for instance, in the erotic field.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 3

6/03/2014 10:04 am

4

Touching and Imagining

Tactile utilitarianism objects Tactile utilitarianism activities Comb Manual work Toothbrush General sexual activity Visit to a doctor (medical examination) Face cloth and brush Soap Surgical procedure Ointments and creams Barefoot walking Manicure scissors Sunbaking Clothes, shoes Swimming Massage equipment Body washing Working equipment, tools, materials Getting dressed Condoms Trimming fingernails Surgical tools Perspiring Weapons etc. etc. Experiments in expanding the utilitarian functions of touch These experiments take place in the two spheres of our psychological life: 1. Touch; used to enlarge the possibilities of inter-human communication. 2. Tactile therapy. Research into the fundamental importance of tactile communication, conducted in the USA in the 1950s by Frank A. Geldard, Professor of Psychology and Dean of the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, can be regarded as significant. Even though this research was undertaken for totally utilitarian purposes (it was financed by the Ministry of Navy) and has little connection with my experimentation, it is interesting for several reasons. Science finally took notice of the unrealized potential of touch and commenced its systematic investigation.2 Furthermore, it pointed to the quantitative range of tactile sensibilities and technical perspective of its exploitation, which could also have some bearing on tactile art.3 Although tactile therapy could be classed in some ways among the unconventional utilitarian actions (attempting relaxation, personal balance, improving of physical and mental condition and so on), at the same time it fits into imaginative tactile procedures, reminiscent of a simple nursery rhyme.4 There is no doubt that the application of tactile therapy can have a considerable effect on the cultivation of touch, thereby serving as a preparatory education of future tactile ‘audiences’. I regard this as being of major significance for the new tactile arts. Jerzy Grotowski has attempted expansion of tactile perceptions beyond narrow utilitarian functions in some para-theatrical projects. Richard Mennen, in ‘Grotowski’s Paratheatrical Projects,’ describes one such experience: As with Scierski’s ‘narrow group,’ Cieslak’s was a one-day introduction to a process that ordinarily takes several weeks. There were more than thirty participants who waded up streams, jumped in mud holes, danced with flaming torches, caressed each other with wheat but there were so many experiences that later I could not recall the precise sequence. By the end I felt a profound connection with the natural world and that I had begun to search in a very physical way for roots and sources. One of the most memorable moments was when I found myself digging

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 4

6/03/2014 10:04 am

between utilitarianism and imagination

5

with my hands into the loose earth of a recently ploughed field full of roots and asking the roots who I was. I wrote in my journal: As I dug deeper into the earth, my whole arm in it and the roots, I felt in my body, with each thrust, something strong, hidden, like birth, like sex, like death; frightening and necessary. I do not know what it was, but it was something. It was also like a source.5 It seems that the purpose of these experiments is to break with the usual stereotypes of tactile (and non-tactile) sensory experiences, to divorce them from utilitarianism and to stimulate the imagination. In that sense it is a pragmatic preparation of sensitivity, of its sharpening, of freeing it from utilitarian habits, to enable us to perceive the world and its challenges in a new way. It is comparable to the preparation of tactile perception of objects – as described by Marinetti in his manifesto. Thus even the para-theatrical project of Jerzy Grotowski and similarly the tactile therapy of Bernard Gunther can be included in the introductory phases of imaginative tactile arts.

8. Lygia Clark: The I and the You: Cloth–Body–Cloth series, 1960

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 5

6/03/2014 10:04 am

6

Touching and Imagining

In 1980 I made a series of tactile plates to be used in psychological tests at the Children’s Psychiatric Clinic, Motol Hospital, Prague. Naturally, all the plates were covered so that the subjects had to rely entirely on their sense of touch.

A. a) yellow

b) blue    c) green B. d) purple e) orange    f) red 9. A and B: Tablets of elementary structures for studying ‘colour touch’

10. C. – Mother

11.  D. – Animal : Two Rorschach tactile tablets 12. E. – Way : Tablet of tactile orientation and tactile memory. (The subject inserts a finger – or even several fingers – into the furry ‘nook’ A, and sets out on the road marked out with iron spikes till he reaches the ‘nook’ B. Then the subject tries to ‘draw’ the road from memory including all curves and changes of direction.)

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 6

6/03/2014 10:04 am

between utilitarianism and imagination

7

Initial results with tactile stimulative material First part – stimulative Tablets A and B (‘colours’) The participants claimed to sense altogether: – seven standard colours (primary and compound) – red (R), yellow (Y), green (G), blue (B), purple (P), orange (O) and brown (BR); – three monochromes – black (BL), grey (GR) and white (W); – two more colours – ginger (GI) and russet (RS). Except for the last two, every colour occurred at least five times (the primary colours at least twelve times). To ease the handling process it was necessary to arrange the colours into larger groups because the variety of colours used was too large in relation to the small number of stimulations. I decided to arrange the colours according to their traditional groups, ‘warm’ – R, Y, BR, O, ‘cold’ – B, G, P and monochromatic – BL, GR, W – without differentiating them into primary or compound colours. (GI and RS were also put into the ‘warm’ group.) Table 1 – Incidence of colour groups in individual tactile stimuli Colour group

Cold

Warm

Monochromatic

a b c d e f

7 2 6 3.5 5 4

5 9 7 8.5 6 10

3 4 2 3 4 1

Totals

27.5

45.5

17

A statistical evaluation is inappropriate, not just because of the small sample but above all because of the whole nature of the inquiry (for instance there was no prior decision about the number of colours the subject could use). Colour characteristics of the stimulative tablets This is an attempt to analyse colour associations in relation to individual tables. Tablet a largely cold colours (particularly blue), very few warm colours (red completely absent); Tablet b preponderance of dark, monochromatic and warm colours (especially black and all warm ones), which are strengthened by the occurrence of non-typical warms (ginger and russet); cold colours are largely absent, blue entirely; Tablet c slightly colder colours (especially blue) and darker chromatic ones (absence of grey and white); Tablet d difficult to characterize, leaning towards warmer compound colours (brown), otherwise the range of colours is not significant; Tablet e few compound colours, fewer warm ones and many monochromatic ones (especially black) side by side with distinctly warm, distinctly cold and monochromatic ones; Tablet f many warm colours, absence of darker chromatics (black and grey) and cold colours emphasise lightness (light blue and green).

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 7

6/03/2014 10:04 am

8

Touching and Imagining

Emotional evaluation of the tablets The tablet named by the subjects as on top of the list of emotional evaluation (the most sympathetic) was given two points, in the second place one point, in the first place of negative evaluation (least sympathetic) minus two points, in the second place minus 1 point. Table 2 – Order of liking of tablet (difference of weighted positive and negative scores) 1. f +7 points 2. a +5 points 3. d +3 points 4. b –1 point 5. e –1 point 6. c –13 points

Positive

Negative

14 5 8 15 2 1

7 0 5 14 3 14

In first place is the tablet with the objectively most popular sample (rated by the subjects – ‘smooth, round, rough’ and similar). In second place is the relatively most structured tablet (compared with Tablet c, from which it differs by having a smoother surface) generally characterized by the subjects in a consistent way (‘wavy, wave like’ and similar). In the last place is the clearly slanting, structured tablet with a rough surface (according to the participants – ‘sharp, scrappy, cutting’). Simple valuation in terms of positive and negative choices is not adequate because some tablets were chosen up to six times more often (positive and negative) than others. Table 3 – Order of tablets according to overall number of votes (positive and negative) 1. 2. 3.

b f c

29 votes 21 votes 15 votes

4. 5. 6.

d a e

13 votes 5 votes 5 votes

Most noticeable are the emotional valuations of Tablet b. It is valued most equivocally of all tablets (14 times positive and 15 times negative). Various statements illustrate these differences well: positive – pointy, harsh, ticklish and similar; negative – scratchy, prickly, sharp. While in the case of the positive valuation this tablet is valued objectively (oblong, sharp), in the negative valuation these characteristics are also expressed, but generally described more subjectively (scratchy, prickly), suggesting fear of injury. The second most noticeable tablet is f. It attracts positive responses like ‘soft, gently round, funny, has soft bump’ and negative ones ‘sharply round, rugged’. This tablet, coming in second place, indicates its relatively positive attraction. Tablet c, in third place, is to a certain extent the opposite of the previous one, Tablet f. Being almost singularly negatively valued it is the tablet attracting most negative attention. Also worth mentioning is the least singular attraction of the second most popular Tablet a – its popularity caused by a small number of positive choices combined with the absence of negative choices. Second part – global stimuli – C and D The instructions were designed to lead to reactions causing associations and tactile perceptions, so that the participants would somehow express their feelings towards the stimulus as a whole. In this sense some kind of interpretation (see later) was achieved by

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 8

6/03/2014 10:04 am

between utilitarianism and imagination

9

only eleven participants (74 per cent) for the two tablets, the remainder did not express any. In practice, all subjects gave an interpretation after some time elapsed while they re-examined the object. We will demonstrate the phases taken to acquaint the subjects with the stimulus, their reactions and how we were observing them. First phase – analysis and recognition of the stimuli Without exception this occurred in all subjects right from the start. They described what they were touching – i.e. they identified the materials – for instance ‘this is a sponge and underneath some hair – from a fur, then a brush, again a cut-up sponge and something like a face-washer’. In this phase a subject was unable to distance himself/ herself from the recognition of the impulse, even if it was suggested (in this instance that was premature). Not until this phase was over was the subject capable of attempting some generalisation and higher level of interpretation, of extending (by abstracting from the concrete materials he/she was still discovering) beyond the identification he/she was making with the fantasy or real world. This first phase lasted from several seconds up to several minutes and some subjects never progressed beyond it. Second phase – interpretative (classifying – associating – of real or fantasy world to tactile sensations) This was not the same for all subjects. When it did happen (and then almost without exception it came about after some suggestions or direct urging), it seemed that the subject tended still to remain in the first phase, as if he/she didn’t ‘have enough of it’. At other times the interpretation reached only a low level as previously described – it became a matter of identifying materials and objects from the first phase, naming them, describing their purpose, which was no more relevant to their tactile experience – for instance the previously recognized sponge and hair in the first phase led to an interpretation ‘there’s a brush and a sponge – some washing items’. There appears to be an association with some characteristic objects, as remembered by the subjects from previous experiences. Interpretation in the true sense of the word, as we are going to use it, appeared with 74 per cent of participants. In this sense we think of interpretation as classifying – associating the content of the real or imaginary world with tactile impulses, rather than associations based on customary usage of objects known previously. Content of interpretations In general, the motive is natural and architectural (exterior) for 50 per cent of all interpretations and then there are interpretations of faces and heads of people and animals, 34 per cent, and concrete objects – complete with their usage or some indication of it. Table 4 – Overview of contents of interpretation to stimuli C and D Stimulus C – mother Nature (lawn; African savannah) x 5 Architecture (houses; hamlet) x 2 Animal heads (‘goat head’) x 2 Human heads (‘devil’) x 1 Concrete description and usage (‘items for washing’) x 1 Concrete description, no usage (‘brush’) x 2

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 9

Stimulus D – animal (playground; park) x 3 (2 houses) x 4 (old beggar) x 1 (‘face of water sprite’) x 4 (‘something to wash with: sponges and scrubbing brushes’) x 1 --

6/03/2014 10:04 am

10

Touching and Imagining

Stimulus C: Appears to be more difficult (more primitive and eliciting weaker interpretations – ‘concretizations’), suggesting a more diffused impression (more natural motives). Stimulus D: Is easier (less concretization), concrete, more structured and inclusive of interpretation (architectural) and less diffuse (more natural) especially a large proportion of animate motives (human – imaginary – and animal faces). Stimulus D seems to be more valuable than C. Note to the third part of the experiment (Tablet E) This part demonstrates how it is possible to achieve results contrary to the previous stimuli. The suggested modification does not relate to the stimulative material itself but a method of maximising its possibilities. For instance, it was possible to do the following: to ask the subject to do a parallel drawing with one hand of what he/she was feeling with the other hand while blindfolded. That would become more of an experiment in motor coordination of two hands without the benefit of sight. A further drawing of the same thing (‘a maze’) could be done with the help of sight but without the parallel tactile sensation or the previous drawing. This would measure recall and accuracy of memory and movements of the hand in space. A comparison of such two reproductions would result in interesting findings regarding coordination of hands and the role of sight and memory in reproduction of tactile spatial perception. Professor of Psychology Luděk Vrba, Children’s Psychiatric Clinic, Motol 1981 (unpublished notes)

S Like many other ‘discoveries’ of modern art, tactilism has its infant imagery in childhood games. Apart from Blind Man’s Bluff there are others: Game to recognize likeness Children stand in a circle and a blindfolded child in the centre attempts to guess the identity of another child by touching his or her face. Writing on the back Using a finger or a stick, numbers, short words or even images are drawn on the ‘chosen one’ whose role it is to ‘read’ them or to guess them. Such children’s games, unlike most of the suggestions for tactile activities in Gunther’s Sense Relaxation, have an imaginative basis. I extended them into my own tactile games.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 10

6/03/2014 10:04 am

between utilitarianism and imagination

11

A visit, 1976 Place a chair in the middle of the room a small, empty room it doesn’t have to be in the centre simply somewhere in the room. Turn out the lights, blacken the windows. Total darkness. Lay down sheets of sandpaper from the door leading to the chair. Two players. Firstly, one player places on the seat and the back of the chair various objects that by their structure and distinctive shape will express an improvised theme (early spring, pig-on-the-spit feast or vacation, for instance). Meanwhile, the second player removes all his/her clothes and enters when called in. He/she tries to feel with his/her bare foot the first sheet of sandpaper on the floor near the door. From there the player feels for the next piece of sandpaper which is lying somewhere within a footstep’s reach. In this fashion the player continues until step by step he/she reaches the chair. The player sits down on the objects on the chair, leans on the back of the chair, then tries to guess the theme of the improvisation. The players swap roles. A game for one year, 1976 Prepare about one litre of fresh starch glue. (In a cup mix a little cold water with several spoonfuls of flour, then pour boiling water into it, stirring constantly.) In a shoebox place some hard small balls, peas, beads or pellets. Into another box put some sharp and cold materials such as nails, studs and drawing pins. Into yet another box place sand, sawdust or flour. And into the fourth box place soft, pliable materials, small textile pieces, teased cotton wool, hairballs. Put on a blindfold. Place the boxes in various places in a closed room. Immerse hands in the warm starch glue. Search for the boxes in the room. Place the left hand’s palm in the first box, back of the hand in the second box. Place the palm of the right hand in the third box, then the back into the fourth box. The winner is whoever does it fastest. Clifford Williams game, 1976 First wash hands in running cold water. Then place hands into a pile of wood dust. Allow to dry. Rub the sawdust off. Rub hands with Vaseline. Put on rubber gloves. Put hands into the middle of a medium sized baking dish and ask your assistant, whom during the whole procedure you address as Mrs Williams, to pour some thin plaster of Paris on your hands. Concentrate on the sensation of the setting plaster, on the stiffening and warmth generated by the process. Pull hands out of the rubber gloves and for the next week suggest to your visitors that, instead of shaking hands with you, they insert their hand in the glove.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 11

6/03/2014 10:04 am

3 RESTORER

Experiment in tactile interpretation Participants: Micheline Bounoure, Vratislav Effenberger, Albert Marenčin, Emila Medková, Juraj Mojžíš, Alena Nádvorníková, Martin Stejskal, Ludvík Šváb A tactile objecT is to tactile sensations like a kind of burrow with malicious, secluded spaces, secret passageways and traps. It is not only about touching with fingers, registering harmonious or disharmonious changes of structures but also about shapes, identified or otherwise; about blending of two or more structures, when we are searching for something in something else; about the unwitting touching of free, floating fragments of things capable of arousing reflexive associations; about movement, passive or accommodating. The perception of a tactile object is like an expedition into an unknown country of dreams, where nothing is certain, where even clearly familiar objects assume the appearance of something unreal, where one has to rely on one’s own ability of association and tactile memories which, however, can always mislead us. The simple act of inserting one’s hand into the black sleeve of the object is tantamount to inserting one’s hand into the mouth of truth and waiting for a judgement.

13. Restorer (tactile object), 1974

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 12

6/03/2014 10:04 am

restorer

13

14. Restorer at Work (newspaper photograph)

Purpose of the experiment To find out: 1) If touch, as one of the senses, is capable of stimulating associative thinking and becoming a stimulus for imagination. 2) If individual tactile objects, shapes and structures, arranged in certain imaginative relationships, after ‘reading’ by touch are capable of producing organization into a unified whole. 3) To what extent is a subjective tactile perception capable of objectivity. 4) If touch, isolated from other senses, is capable of causing ‘aesthetic’ arousal. 5) If the transmission plays any part in the visualization of the touched objects (and the associated problems of synaesthesia). In short, if touch, as a sense, is capable of perceiving an artwork in a way similar to vision and hearing. Rules of the game The participants of the experiment were presented with an object made by me, an imaginative tactile interpretation of a photograph, Restorer at Work. No one except me knew the original photograph. The participants in the experiments were required to: 1) Insert the hand (or hands) into a double-lined sleeve material, to identify and list the items and their structures and to describe their immediate impressions. 2) Describe the tactile impressions, their consequent associations and analogies, and an imaginative whole. 3) Try to figure out which of the ten selected photographs was a model for the author’s tactile interpretation.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 13

6/03/2014 10:04 am

14

Touching and Imagining

Additional questions a) What were your first feelings immediately before and after the insertion of the hand (or hands) into the object? b) Did you sense the felt items in colour, in black and white, or did your tactile sensations take place ‘in the darkness?’ 1974 Restorer Experiment (My own verbal, imaginary interpretation of the newspaper photograph in relation to the tactile object.) A footprint on the face, footprint of the right foot that stepped on the face, chamois upper of the shoe. Bearded face, shoe with hair and a beard. Gagged mouth, gagged with the foot – shoe with the strap fastened, shoe with its toe packed with paper. Smooth, round object, the exact identification of which is immaterial, represents here the coolness of the professional concentration and the coolness and technical smoothness of the syringe, its shape reminiscent of the curve of the restorer’s left thumbnail, his left hand drawing the attention to the centre of the picture. Two tassels hanging free above the curve of the nail – two skilled hands with deft golden fingers. Two sequincovered spheres hanging above the half weight of a pull-down kitchen lamp, two eyes which, with the curve of the fingernail, represent the curve of the restorer’s intense concentration – these are the main agents of a sadistic aggression against the head with its footprint in place of a face, aggression that is directed against the passive martyr, against the painted masochist who lacks the pleasure of suffering. The sperm-like string of beads of the corkscrew boring into the shoe without any emotion, as if the shoe were the cork of a bottle. Bags of arms, free of tension, bags of nuts blindly colliding with each other like empty thoughts. Ungainly movement of crammed socks that never seem to be hitched up. Corks, bits of rags, buttons, nuts – these show passivity incompatible with the aggression of impersonal sadism – the authenticity of pleasure. Identifying phase of the experiment Reproduction of tactile objects, collages and drawings has only a narrow informational purpose, as the reproductions don’t fulfil the same function as reproductions of painting or sculpture. With the reproduction of a tactile work, sight necessarily becomes a strong intermediary which, in contrast to touch, is very specific, and the mysterious traps set for touch do not sidetrack it into a panic of identification. Nor is there any necessity for gradual ‘reading’ of the object, a characteristic of touch. Furthermore, sight immediately commences to appraise the aesthetic quality of the work, something that is irrelevant to tactile art. Tactile object ‘Restorer’ is comprised of the following fragments of reality 1) Worn, black ladies’ chamois leather right-foot shoe with a strap across the vamp, fastened by a metal buckle. The toe of the shoe is filled with crumpled white paper. Around the heel and the point the shoe is covered with black, fine fur. 2) A corkscrew with wooden, red lacquered handle. 3) Nylon, dark grey knitted sock (man’s) with geometric pattern, filled with cloth wads of wool and cotton and bottle corks (six pieces). 4) Coarsely knitted winter sock, woollen, white, filled with walnuts and buttons.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 14

6/03/2014 10:04 am

restorer

15

15. Jan Švankmajer: Uncovered Object, 1974

5) One half of the cream-coloured ceramic weight of a kitchen pull-down lamp. 6) A buckle from a woman’s waist belt made of black and white beads. 7) Two tassels made of gold fibres. 8) Two small balls covered with golden sequins. Micheline Bounoure Missing in the description: The bead buckle from the woman’s belt, buttons in the sock filled with walnuts, paper in the shoe toe. The weight from the pull-down lamp is incorrectly described as a mould for making Easter eggs (a plastic object, shaped like a half-egg). Also missing are the two tassels and the balls covered with sequins. Vratislav Effenberger Missing in the description: Paper in the shoe toe, buttons in the sock with walnuts, bottle corks in the sock with wool and cotton wads, balls with sequins incorrectly described as balls of fabric. Weight of the pull-down lamp mistakenly described as the back of a toy bug. Albert Marenčin Missing in the description: Paper in the shoe toe, the two sequin-covered balls, buttons in the sock with walnuts. On the other hand he, and he alone, observes the material from which the shoe is made (chamois leather). He mistakenly describes the buckle made of beads as a piece of brocade. In the second sock he incorrectly describes the number of bottle corks as two (there are six), the wads in the sock he vaguely identifies

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 15

6/03/2014 10:04 am

16

Touching and Imagining

as ‘something soft’. He progressively describes the weight from the pull-down lamp as a torso of a doll, a piece of old lacquered furniture, a flask, a crucible, a masturbating device, without being able to decide unequivocally on any of these. Emila Medková Missing in the description: Corkscrew, the bead buckle, the entire content of one sock (wads and bottle corks) and the buttons in the second sock. The weight from the pulldown lamp is incorrectly described as a car lamp. Juraj Mojžíš Mojžíš omits the identifying phase; he immediately proceeds to the imaginative perceiving of the object and to giving preferences to certain objects or structures that for him have the strongest associations. It is not easy to determine which of the missing aspects of the description are results of inaccuracy and which are subjective preferences. Missing in the description: the bead buckle, the sock with bottle corks, the wads of material in the sack with walnuts (in the text there is mention only of walnuts) the buttons, tassels, even the balls are missing. The weight of the pull-down lamp is described only emotionally. Alena Nádvorníková In the description of the sock with walnuts, the buttons are missing. There are also inaccuracies in the identification of materials of different items: so in the sock with bottle corks are not wads of wool or cotton but pieces of rag. The metal half-egg is half of a ceramic weight for a pull-down lamp. The tassels above it are made of metal threads, not leather. The bead-covered buckle, although not indicated as such, is described correctly. The relative placing of the two socks is rather startling: the sock with bottle corks is described as being at the top and the sock with walnuts to the right, below, whilst in reality both socks are next to each other at the same height. Martin Stejskal Missing in the description: Content of one sock (bottle corks and wads), the weight of the pull-down lamp is mistakenly taken for ‘part of the face of some puppet’ and the material is judged to be bakelite. Furthermore one tassel is missing but the description of the material from which the tassels are made is accurate. There is uncertainty about the material for the two balls. Paper in the toe of the shoe and beaded strap (in the form of the description of the structure) appears only in the imaginative phase. Ludvík Šváb Missing in the description: The beaded buckle, paper in the toe of the shoe while knitted socks are incorrectly identified as ‘jute bags’. In the description of the sock with walnuts, the buttons are missing. In the other sock, the wads become cotton wool. The lamp’s half weight is described as ‘an egg-shaped object made of bakelite’ (during the progress of the experiment only this participant identified the item correctly). Instead of two tassels he felt only one. The two balls covered with sequins are also missing. It cannot be stated with certainty which of the difficulties in identifying the items can be ascribed to the communicative limitation of touch (objective and subjective), to the unfamiliarity with the experiment or to mere inattention. From this brief account of

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 16

6/03/2014 10:04 am

restorer

17

16. Martin Stejskal: Visualized Impression (before the imaginative phase), 1974

inaccuracies and omissions in the description of the object it is not possible to judge its quality (by quality I mean preferring certain characteristics of the individual items that make up the total object, their shape, structure, placing and so on) which depends heavily on the associative perception of the objects and finally belongs to the imaginative phase of the experiment. Even if none of the participants’ topographical description of the object is complete and correct, it can be said that their ability to resolve the shapes and structures with touch was for all of them so objective that in this phase of the experiment it did not engender in them any false illusions (with the exception perhaps of the description of the pull-down lamp’s half weight), and so did not result in any serious differences among them. For conclusive evidence of the informational capacity of touch, it would be necessary to set up a comparative test in which the description of tactile objects would be compared with visual description of the same. In spite of the described deficiencies in topographical description, it did show that for all participants touch supplied adequate information to arouse associative memories and opened the door for imagination. Imaginative phase of the experiment Associations stimulated in individual participants by tactile perception of the object and, above all, their connecting and ranking in imaginary wholes, have qualitative differences.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 17

6/03/2014 10:04 am

18

Touching and Imagining

Emila Medková regarded this phase as a plateau of freely ranked associations: ‘That disgusting shoe can only belong to Věra Lukášová, the ceiling light comes from a black Tatra 603 [luxury car manufactured in the former Czechoslovakia], the first sock is a pešek [character from a Czech children’s game] who just walks around, the other is a real Father Christmas sock’, that she did not attempt to connect into some imaginative whole. Vratislav Effenberger, without giving any inkling of the process of association, had an imaginative perception based on a static picture of the Holy Family: ‘on the left, the female symbol, on the right, male and in the middle the symbol of the infant.’ Alena Nádvorníková compiles two different imaginative wholes from the sequence of impressions, feelings, associations and analogies but is unable to express her preference for either: ‘on the left is a feminine environment, on the right a rattling male one, at the moment of amorous confrontation? Muscles like walnuts, rolling masculine sex, even a pair of balls and two tassels – a virgin and a man – actually the moment just before the confrontation. But also: masturbation. The centre is the most disturbing, when the hand softly strokes the half-egg and the fingers gently feel the rough ripples.’ These imaginative wholes, in contrast to Vratislav Effenberger, are not mere static pictures; here the emphasis is on the perception of action (meeting, masturbation). Here the element of a storyline appears, further developed by Micheline Bounoure, Juraj Mojžíš, Albert Marenčin and, above all, Ludvík Šváb. Micheline Bounoure: ‘A childhood night visit in the family home, specifically forbidden to the children. I found equipment made by a sexually perverted uncle (very sadistic considering that the corkscrew penetrates Cinderella’s shoe). The uncle delighted in putting his hands on an Easter egg mould as on a woman’s buttocks.’ . . . In addition to this fabulous interpretation Micheline Bounoure adds a kind of stocktaking approach to the object (‘Armament of the Little Indian’) that also appears in Albert Marenčin’s description. In his case, however, it is more like an inventory of a lady’s boudoir: ‘. . . the corkscrew, two tassels, baubles, which usually adorn old drapes or sofas, material with a relief pattern, something like that . . . its order and its sum total dissolves the chaos of ideas and confused associations and leads into their rational order, even to fabulation: lady wearing a fur coat, in the midst of an old Art Nouveau interior with heavy drapes and a sofa and so on.’ While Micheline Bounoure’s inventory-like interpretation is a mere static and insignificant association, Albert Marenčin’s is an unequivocal fabulation. Ludvík Šváb, as indicated by the name of his interpretation, ‘A touch of evil’, experienced, while perceiving the object, one of his favourite film scenarios: ‘I am locked up in the cellar, in complete darkness. I have obviously been attacked because a curtain rope with repulsive tassels on the ends binds me. Evidently I was knocked out, I remember nothing . . . it must have been an assault because in my mouth I even have a dirty rough canvas gag that is suffocating me . . . I was obviously blinded and my eye sockets pierced by a cord with tassels. That was obviously the whole aim.’ Martin Stejskal breaks the perception of the object into three independent, imaginative wholes in this phase: ‘a dark, yawning snout of a wild animal – shoes are pierced with the corkscrew. In its death throes, the animal is gasping with its brown snout for the last breath of rancid air. Furthermore, it is stuffed with a paper gag that undoubtedly contains some important message. Nearby is a light blue mask – a phallus. Above, the sky – a region of small, shining, coral beads. Also two symbols of fecundity – breasts filled to bursting with their fruit – Christmas stocking of my childhood.’ So even here there is a strong inclination to fabulation.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 18

6/03/2014 10:04 am

restorer

19

Juraj Mojžíš, in an imaginative analogy to the tactile object, develops a lyrical meeting between man and woman: ‘the snowman is reminiscing and skeletons of trees do not tempt him, he doesn’t fear the place where landscape begins. On the contrary, he loves the clearing where the woman ends. The night is fed by the stars but he doesn’t know about it and doesn’t want to. He wants to comprehend the woman’s beginning but doesn’t understand it. He says to himself, thank you so much, thank you so much, but still doesn’t understand. He recalls the spring days of grace and still doesn’t understand. The woman feels touched, even though she has not been touched (why not?) and says: “Excuse me, perfect love?” She laughs scornfully, then wraps herself in paper and hisses: “Perfect love,” sets herself on fire, burns up and flakes of ash whisper: “Perfect love.”’ The fact that most of the participants ‘experience’ the perception dramatically – be it action or a coherent narrative – apparently suggests a technical kind of communication with the tactile object. It is not possible to grasp the entire tactile object, as it is with a painting or a sculpture, it has to be gradually ‘read’ by the fingers. Individual perceptions come gradually, as in the perception of some event. What is more, in perceiving a tactile object it is not possible to become mired in aesthetic evaluation. Feelings of liking or not liking always have a concrete basis. Perceiving an object tactilely, touching individual parts with one’s fingers, is in itself a ‘manual’ function so it is understandable that it arouses associations of other kinds (a walk through an old attic, knocking on cellar walls, masturbating, for example). Similarly, the inventorial interpretation of the object (collection of arms that belongs to the Little Indian, content of lady’s modern boudoir, list of Emily Medková’s analogies) needs to be considered as a gradual familiarization belonging to distinctive tactile specifications, taking it beyond the boundary of creative art (although it does share common spatial limitations – some boundaries and, to some extent, even the materials used) and closer to literature, with which it shares precisely the same gradual perception of the work, the potential visualisation of something ‘read’. Synaesthesia Research into the frequency and quality of dual perception would require experimentation aimed at a specific problem and would have to be done with a larger number of people. I believe and assume that a synaesthetic touch/vision perception will not be any more or less frequent than hearing/vision perception. At any rate, in principle it can be assumed that a human capacity for perceiving objects by touch equals the capacity to visualize them. Therefore, such capacities would exist on a scale of tactile ‘blindness’, from tactile ‘short-sightedness’, ‘colour-blindness’ (structureblindness, shape-blindness), tactile ‘Daltonism’, etc., to cases of synaesthesia (touch/ vision, touch/hearing) or to a para-psychological tactile capacity.1 These different tactile sensibilities of touch say nothing, or almost nothing, about the imaginative perception of tactile objects. The extent of experimentation and interpretation did not allow going into synaesthetic details. Therefore the only question that was relevant to synaesthesia contributed nothing substantial. It did prove that the majority of participants in the experiment ‘saw’ the object in colour (with the exception of Ludvík Šváb). To what degree they saw it identically (mutually, as well as considering the objective reality of the individual items) was not looked into and would require further experimentation. Nor was it ascertained whether the individual structures of the items stimulate some aural sensations. In the instances where the participants specify some subjects in colours (yellow shoe of Emily Medková, coloured representation of

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 19

6/03/2014 10:04 am

20

Touching and Imagining

the objects by Martin Stejskal, etc.) they do not correspond to reality. These have to be attributed to memory associations. Some elements of tactile objects stimulated identical or very similar associations in individual participants. However, when examined more closely it became apparent that they were due more to evident similarities than to some transcendental communication. Christmas stocking Socks filled with walnuts, buttons and bottle corks stimulated a perception of Christmas presents in most participants (Medková, Stejskal, Marenčin, Nádvorníková) and more than likely also Effenberger’s ‘Holy Family’, thanks to its ‘Holy’ attribute. Animal Touching the fur-covered shoe provoked the image of an animal. Stejskal referred to the ‘yawning snout of an animal’, Ludvík Šváb to a dead rat, Albert Marenčin to a dog, Alena Nádvorníková and Micheline Bounoure, in a later phase, to a horse’s mane. Modern boudoir Golden tassels suggest an atmosphere of some modern salon (Marenčin, Nádvorníková) or for Ludvík Šváb the image of modern drapes. Gag An image of a gag appears for Ludvík Šváb, where it is associated with a stuffed sock (cotton bag) object. Martin Stejskal agreed with my own verbal interpretation that it was the crumpled up paper in the toe of the shoe. Understandably, the tactile sensations, as confirmed by our experiments, stimulate, above all, erotic associations. I don’t believe that the unusual character of the proffered object causes it. Bodily (tactile) sensations play a primary role in erotica, therefore our associations and perceptions of tactile objects will always steer in the direction of that area, which is the largest storehouse of tactile memories. Albert Marenčin: ‘I insert my left hand into the black bag containing a secret, and with my right hand record my perceptions, feelings and images. The mere insertion of the hand into the black bag stimulates a number of images, predominantly erotic, which certainly describe and direct continuation into yet unsuspected associations.’ Vratislav Effenberger: ‘Insertion of the hand into the opening is accompanied by a certain shyness, or even fear, mixed with previous impressions of erotic or pornographic moments.’ Erotic associations appear in all participants (excepting Ludvík Šváb and Emily Medková). Sadomasochistic elements occur to Albert Marenčin and Micheline Bounoure. Masturbation occurs to Alena Nádvorníková and Albert Marenčin. Erotic symbolism is perceived by Alena Nádvorníková, Micheline Bounoure, Martin Stejskal, Vratislav Effenberger and, in a lyrical format, by Juraj Mojžíš.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 20

6/03/2014 10:04 am

restorer

21

Half weight of the kitchen pull-down lamp This item proved to be the most disturbing part of the object and in a number of cases aroused a thorough associative delirium. Albert Marenčin: ‘Unfamiliarity made me imagine, at least initially, at the back of my mind, a round and hard object, which I touched lightly several times; not once did I manage to identify it and so I left it till the end. My fingers kept sliding over and over its smooth, cold surface, looking for some analogy. In the context of suggested associations it reminded me of the torso of a doll made of synthetic material or a piece of old polished furniture . . . or a part of some item from a ladies boudoir? A perfume bottle or a small jar? Or some other object from the secret workshop of women’s beauty and hygiene? Or a masturbation aid, that mysterious apparatus which I have never seen, and for that reason it so powerfully excited my pubertal fantasy . . . ?’ Ludvík Šváb: ‘Very carefully I grope my way along the wall – with the free hand I investigate a bakelite shape, egg-like (a large, apparently pigeon’s egg, if an egg at all), half buried. It is quite smooth, not at all affected by decay in the cellar or dryness of the other objects. Maybe it is a switch – originally it was perhaps an artificial egg – a weight on the cord of a pull-down lamp.’ Alena Nádvorníková: ‘A spherical half-egg, cold to touch, half polished part for some machine, half of a cold, perfect fruit, the top of it disappearing into a sexual crack made of small pearls . . . most disturbing is the centre: when the hand rests over the half-egg and the fingers gently caress the roughly shaped groove.’ Micheline Bounoure: ‘. . . the thing made of plastic – the half-egg – in the shape of an Easter egg . . . Uncle liked to put his hands on the Easter egg as on a woman’s buttocks.’ Martin Stejskal: ‘. . . from the back wall emerges a relief (I almost want to say made of bakelite) mask. I assume that it is part of a face of some puppet . . .’ and further on ‘Next to it a light, blue mask – phallus, some totemic symbol without eyes, mouth and nose, with only a shock of metal hair.’ In the analogy phase he compares this ‘antiseptic bakelite phallus’ with the barrel of a syringe held in the restorer’s hand. Juraj Mojžíš: Even though he does not directly attempt to identify the object, judging by the amount of attention he gives to his interpretation, it is evident that he too found it exciting. ‘I stopped and paused on the cold item in the middle of the object. It has a lock that he is also closing. He is the designer. It’s possible only to slide down the object, is the designer inside? Energy of the design? Emptiness of the design? Both tempt me. Both temptations stay with me, leaving me with a choice to go right or left. Away from the tenderness, from the coldness under my palm that wants to suggest something, to convince me of something because I know that time is passing, and hazelnuts are deceptive. Design reveals the designer. It reveals him, behind him there is only the graceful passing of a love boat and the regretful rattle of nuts.’ Emily Medková: ‘A car dome lamp originating from the Tatra 603.’ Vratislav Effenberger: ‘The dorsal part of a toy bug (ladybug)’; it is for him a symbol of a child.’ From the preceding, it follows that to facilitate free associations, analogies and imaginative thinking, it is best to choose items which are vague, difficult to define or parts of objects which, precisely because they defy identification, excite with their strangeness, stimulate elemental, structural, warm and colourful sensations; and reach those levels of the unconscious which so far could not exercise the imagination in any other kind of art and only sporadically come to the fore in the form of tactile dreams.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 21

6/03/2014 10:04 am

22

Touching and Imagining

Analogical phase of the experiment There were several ways to make a tactile object for this experiment: 1) To create a tactile object without any regard for visual impressions: Scatter the most disparate items and parts of them around a room, turn out the lights, then let the participants decide by touch the items’ suitability for a subjective expression of unconscious wishes. Then conduct an interpretation of the object and compare it with the interpretations of other participants. 2) Convert some visual perception (picture, photograph) into the ‘language’ of touch, as much as possible. Then ask the participants to reverse the process. 3) Capture, in the form of a tactile object, some personal experience, then let the participants freely interpret such a subject and compare each other’s experiences and perceptions of it with the original personal experience. 4) Carry out a subjective tactile interpretation of objective visual perception. The last option, which I finally selected, presented the participants with a difficult task, since between the object, with which they were presented, and the selected picture, which they had to find among another nine pictures, stood my interpretation that they knew only from the final appearance of the tactile object. Additionally, they were allowed to view the picture only after they finished their own imaginative contribution to the experiment. Suddenly the concept they arrived at during the imaginative phase of the experiment clashed with the ten pictures, which were more or less in disagreement, and they were forced to change their mind, or even abandon that concept altogether and start anew with the knowledge that there were only these ten options from which to choose. Alternatively, the majority of participants found some analogy to relate their concept to the concrete pictures. The embarrassment brought about by the conflict between their own (experienced) imaginative concept (interpretation of the object) and the ten pictures presented, can perhaps be attributed to the widening of the response to the task (from disarming refusal to identification with the author’s interpretation) and to a considerable disparity in the choice of the original picture. It must also be added that the majority of participants found it difficult to choose only one picture and also chose additional ones in which they saw some analogies with their own interpretation of the tactile object. For Vratislav Effenberger, this confrontation causes plain indecision and refusal to even attempt to choose the original picture. (Significantly, he refers to this phase of the experiment incorrectly as identification.) Juraj Mojžíš, after a great deal of hesitation decides on ‘Men on Beach’, but this choice does not satisfy him, he feels cheated, frustrated, a victim of a hoax, finally finds another solution for himself, outside the rules of the experiment. As another, although equally frustrating possibility, he suggests ‘Blacksmiths’ and ‘Restorer’. Albert Marenčin, after an exhaustive process, makes analogical relationships between his concept and all ten pictures, to finally select ‘Stocking Factory’. He explains his choice: ‘Even if I don’t see any brocade clothes, sofas, drapes, women’s shoes and other requisites of a secret bag, all the same I have an impression that it best expresses the unseen, what we suspect when we look at a collective of working women: their mental world, their ideas of beauty and happiness or, even more accurately, our concept of their ideas.’ Secondarily, although as an ironical choice, he introduces ‘Men on Beach’: ‘This is how an uninitiated observer can make fun of a bunch of Surrealists seeking a solution to some enigma and a key to mystery in a black painting.’ He also finds partial analogy in the pictures of ‘Car Accident’, ‘Cosmonauts’, ‘Decoration’, ‘Dog at Goal Post’, ‘Blacksmiths’, ‘Baker’ and ‘Restorer’.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 22

6/03/2014 10:04 am

17. Ten Photographs for Analogical Phase of the Experiment 1) Cosmonauts, 2) Blacksmiths, 3) Decoration, 4) Dog at Goal Post, 5) Baker, 6) Men on Beach, 7) Car Accident, 8) Footballer, 9) Stockings Factory, 10) Restorer

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 23

6/03/2014 10:04 am

24

Touching and Imagining

Micheline Bounoure unambiguously points out as a primary picture ‘Blacksmiths’: ‘The shoe is covered with horse-like hair, the nails have been driven into hooves just like the corkscrew into the shoe. There is a lot of caring in shoeing a horse – the best horses for ploughing are the castrated ones.’ Similarly, even Alena Nádvorníková thinks that: ‘The object was inspired by the picture of men shoeing the horse. There’s this coarse, aggressive, male, rattling element (the two bags), gentle, feminine resignation of the horse which is just about to experience some pain (deflowering). In no other picture can I see fine, soft animal fur (in this case it happens to be the horse’s mane).’ But she finds some analogies to a whole row of other pictures: ‘Baker’, ‘Men on Beach’, ‘Decoration’, ‘Stocking Factory’ and ‘Restorer’. Emila Medková chooses as a starting picture ‘Stocking Factory’. Ludvík Šváb prefers the picture ‘Baker’, then he chooses ‘Blacksmiths’ and ‘Cosmonauts’. Martin Stejskal, after some consideration of ‘Blacksmiths’ and ‘Decoration’, decides emphatically on ‘Restorer’: ‘I find in it not only similarity of shape but also of action . . . the bearded Christ whose mouth is smudged with the dirty shoeprint (I check with my hand that the shoe is the right one). The obstinate Restorer is attempting to remove this ornament with the injection. He is evidently not aware of the smudge, of its shape, he is concerned with getting the job done well. The needle is represented by the corkscrew, the barrel of the syringe by the antiseptic bakelite phallus. The syringe seems to come out of his eyes, which for me are symbolized in the tactile object with two balls. The two tassels on the right side of the tactile object, to me seem to humorously symbolize the whole complex of his mind, (creative potential) hidden in the old sock.’ When we compare Stejskal’s text above to my text accompanying the tactile interpretation of ‘Restorer’ we find, apart from some insignificant differences, a surprising similarity. I suppose based on that similarity with qualitative evaluation of the experiment, the result can be considered very positive. These two independently formed interpretations clearly demonstrate that even tactile impressions are capable of communicating in the area of trans-subjectivity, traversing the boundary of traditional dualism of objectivity and subjectivity. When we attempt some kind of statistical summary of this last phase of the experiment, the table of preferences for individual pictures appears like: Table 1 – Preferences for individual pictures Picture (In first place) (As a variation) Blacksmiths x2 x4 Stocking Factory x2 x1 Restorer x1 x3 Men on Beach x1 x2 Baker x1 x2 The pictures of ‘Decoration’, ‘Cosmonauts’, ‘Car Collision’ and ‘Dog at Goal Post’ were selected only as variants. When we carefully examine the reasons behind the preference for pictures ‘Stocking Factory’, ‘Men on Beach’ and evidently even ‘Baker’, we realize that the contributing factor was not an analysis of individual elements of the objects, or of their mutual connection, but an attempt to grasp some global tactile impression from the object. It is significant that with these selections the participants were not attempting to backtrack

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 24

6/03/2014 10:04 am

restorer

25

to a new interpretation of the object from the viewpoint of the picture they selected. It is different with the choice of the picture of ‘Blacksmiths’, where Micheline Bounoure, as well as Alena Nádvorníková, associated the concrete elements of the object with the action on the picture. (Bounoure: ‘The shoe is covered with horse-like hair – the nails penetrate into the hoof like the corkscrew into the shoe . . .’; Nádvorníková: ‘There’s this coarse, aggressive, male, rattling element (the two bags), gentle, feminine resignation of the horse who is just about to experience some pain (deflowering). In no other picture can I see fine, soft animal fur (in this case it happens to be the horse’s mane).’) Here, in this picture the horse’s hoof is in the compositional centre as well as a meaningful centre. That the object allows such an analytical interpretation, even in relation to a ‘false’ picture of the Blacksmiths, is because between this picture and the real initial picture of the Restorer object is a strong analytical connection. Both represent a ‘sadomasochistic act’, both parade aggressions against a helpless ‘dumb’ beast, though in both instances it is an aggression in the interest of the victim (at the same time against nature). The choice of the picture of the Blacksmiths has to be regarded as an analogical choice. If we examine the statistical table from that point of view, the result of this phase of the experiment, in a quantitative sense, is positive. Concluding notes Touch, in the sphere of art, is a sense without any convention. It even has the advantage that it is difficult to imagine its subjugation to purely aesthetic purposes. For that reason it is capable, ultimately, to bring to our mind authentic material. Whilst I do not want to consider the results of the experiments described above as completely conclusive, I am convinced that tactile objects could, for instance in the sphere of eroticism, result in expression of feelings which until now had to be described in words, colours or shapes. Authentic sources for tactile creativity Erotica Tactile childhood memories Tactile dreams Prague, October–December 1975

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 25

6/03/2014 10:04 am

4 SOURCES OF TACTILE IMAGINATION

Masturbation – hand serving the imagination Mimi Parent, Catalogue for Surrealist exhibition EROS, Paris, 1959–1960 How calm does a man become around the sixth hour! Even the most backward of them begin to comprehend. It starts around the eyes and spreads out from there. A sight that could tempt any man to lie down under the harrow. After that nothing much happens. The condemned man tries to work out the inscription, pursing his lips as if listening. You saw for yourself that it’s not easy to decipher the inscription by looking at it; our man can decipher it from his wounds. It takes lots of work, of course, it will take him six hours. Then the harrow impales him and throws him into the pit where he plops down into the bloody water and cotton wool. Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony, 19141 Patient L.V., born 1906 Some time in July 1954, she was admitted to the psychiatric clinic for the second time, and spoke of many complaints. She was discovering mucus and some small ‘insects with whiskers’ in her faeces. She believed that these parasites were living in her blood but their main location was in her rectum. She blamed the parasites for sensations of biting and itching on her scalp, itching along her spine and pins and needles in the lower extremities. She considered herself to be very ill, very depressed, slept badly and believed she was being stalked, that she might come to some harm. She was hearing someone talking from her brain, giving her various pieces of advice, suspected that it was Pythie again. At other times she heard voices that were abusing her. We carried out the following examinations: blood pressure 120/80, urine completely negative, specific gravity 1020. Internal examination: chest X-ray, electro cardiogram normal, neurological examination, X-ray of stomach and bowels generally within physiological limits. During her stay in the clinic she complained that the parasites were crawling up her back and causing itching over her entire body. She was treated with antihistamine medications and hydrotherapy. She was discharged only partially better, prematurely, because her mother became ill. About one week after discharge from the clinic, the itching in various parts of her body recurred. Every now and then she managed to extract from her skin a tiny stone, a fly or a dead parasite that she took to her local

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 26

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

27

18. Tactile Ohm Mantra, 1993

doctor. They looked like buckshot, the doctor laughed and told her ‘someone has been shot again.’ She didn’t seem to have any more problems with her rectum. At night she felt that she was hypnotized somehow, kept waking up and hearing friendly or threatening voices. She recorded the conversations with these voices in a special notebook. After some time at home the symptoms returned with the same intensity. The parasites were crawling under her skin and causing itching, leading to insomnia. Occasionally, she managed to get feathers, little stones or splinters from under her skin. Patient R.K., born 1896 Several weeks before her second stay in the psychiatric clinic, where she was admitted in 1955, she complained of itching on the forearms, could not sleep and was unhappy; about a fortnight before her arrival in the clinic she found a small insect on her hand which crawled out from under the fingernail, immediately rolled itself into a ball, only its ‘little jaw was sticking out.’ Soon after that she noticed another sort of insect, which she called ‘thin cookies’. This second kind she was unable to squash with her finger, so she was getting rid of them by throwing them out of the window. Tearfully, she related how futile it was as the insects somehow crawled back, attacked her whole body and crawled into her eyes and nose. She experienced great pain when the insects chewed their way through her skin to the surface. Sometimes she conducted hunts for the insects. She became quite animated, rubbed her palm as she collected the insects in her

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 27

6/03/2014 10:04 am

28

Touching and Imagining

hand then showed the empty hand to the doctor with the words: ‘Have a look, I have a handful of them!’ She cried when told that there was nothing to see. Patient M.M., born 1889 In 1955 cards told her that she could rid her face of hairs with a strong solution of soda, then a rinse with an infusion of herbs. In autumn of that same year, through various circumstances, she had to sleep several nights on a sofa in her daughter’s room, a sofa where sometimes the daughter’s dog slept. From then on she complained of being bothered by fleas brought into the flat by the dog. In January 1956, the fleas allegedly attacked her in droves, jumping all over her body, crawling into every corner of her clothes. To her own amazement, the fleas were attacking only the right side of her body. These ‘fowl’ fleas (it was assumed the dog had acquired the fleas from domestic fowls) were visible only when she caught them and immersed them in a glass of water where she then could see them, when wearing her glasses. They were tiny, brown fleas with shiny legs, the females were round and the males had pointy backsides. Studying their life cycle she figured out that they hatched in seven days and lived for thirteen. Realizing that they reproduced very quickly she conducted an intensive campaign against them into which she drew her husband, initially unwillingly, and later on as quite an active co-operator. She scrubbed the floor repeatedly, she washed her face with a strong solution of soda. At home she only wore light underwear that could be washed easily and frequently. She often let her hair down to shake the fleas out. The husband eventually had to obtain several packets of DDT and several litres of Lysol. At his wife’s urging, he tore up the linoleum in the flat and flooded the floor with Lysol. He spread a layer of DDT several centimetres high on the door thresholds. Whilst the patient still had some contact with the dog, she kept treating it with so much DDT that it started to cough up blood. Dr Stanislav Drvota, 19572 The exposed roots of tactile imagination can be traced through the field of pathological touch, not only in tactile hallucinations, but also in reflexive hallucinations, paraesthesia and similar.3 Likewise, onanism, which dates back to the infantile sexual organization of the libido, usually has a strong imaginative component.4 Pain, too, is sometimes experienced imaginatively (phantom limb, tattooing and so on). However, the least comprehensible to me are the sources of tactile imagination in respect of loathing, tactile dreams and synaesthesia. Hands are the most communicative organs of touch, but far from the most sensitive, emotive, or most excitable, because they are closely connected with the utilitarian functions of our other senses. However the physical sense registers and perceives the world (perceives its stimuli) with the entire surface of the body, with all its cavities, internal organs and its mucous membranes. It is these ‘passive’ parts of our bodies that mediate our most intensive sensory experiences. Tactile wooden rolling pins, breadboards and pot lids are designed for ‘aesthetic’ massages of our bodies. When we realize that our entire body is one big erogenous zone, waiting for its tactile awakening, then these articles are the means of that arousal to stimulate these zones, to sensitize them. Is it a new eroticism or ipsatio totalis [complete masturbation]? Tactile wooden spoons, pot lids, rolling pins and boards are alchemistic tools and our bodies are the crucibles for the Magnum Opus of tactilism.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 28

6/03/2014 10:04 am

19. Tactile Wooden Spoons, 1978

21. Tactile Boards, 1978

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 29

20. Tactile Cooking Spoons, 1978

22. Tactile Boards, 1978 (view from the reverse side)

6/03/2014 10:04 am

23. Tactile Tub, 1990

24. Tactile Lids, 1978

25. New Eroticism, 1990

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 30

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

31

26. Tactile Rolling Pin, 1990

27. New Eroticism, 1990

Arcimboldo’s elements game, 1978 Let’s buy four wooden rolling pins Cover one half of the first pin with uncooked rice Cover the other half with scales from pine cones Cover half of the second pin with sponge rubber 3 cm thick Cover the other half of the second pin with feathers Cover half of the third pin with pieces of broken shells Cover the other half of the third pin with aluminium foil Hammer small nails into half of the forth pin and cut their heads off Cover the other half of the fourth pin with molten candle wax Strip naked Rub sandpaper of medium roughness over the belly and thighs to sensitize them Then roll one rolling pin after another over the belly and thighs Change the order of the pins as desired

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 31

6/03/2014 10:04 am

32

Touching and Imagining

28. Masturbation (tactile object), 1975

Masturbation (Experimentation with pictorial analogies to a tactile object) Participants: František Dryje, Michel Dubret, Gilles Dunant, Vratislav Effenberger, Jiří Koubek, Emila Medková, Vince. The object began with a free association of tactile ideas and was named ‘Masturbation’. For obvious reasons I limited my own participation in the experiment to verbal interpretation of the object. None of the participants knew the object’s name or my verbal interpretation. A photograph of the object, which I show here, was taken before I covered it with a black cloth, so it was only accessible for tactile perception, nor was the experimentation known to the participants. The participants were asked to find a visual analogy for tactile perceptions stimulated by handling the object. Interpretation of the object Through several parallels and analogies the object expresses masturbation. In every one of these elements a different characteristic feature is emphasised: the smoothness of a ball of cotton wool clutched with the sharpness of alligator teeth accentuates the moment of fear of being caught, and also warns of the consequences of masturbation. The smooth coolness of a can in the bottom left hand corner of the object, filled with the curve of the thighbone, where the coarse structure of the bare bone marrow is interrupted by a central clump of fine hair, expresses a certain idiosyncratic relationship to this activity. A wobbly, cold lightning flash, running like a spinal cord through a hole of a softly padded vertebra in the shape of a petrified butterfly,

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 32

6/03/2014 10:04 am

29. Uncovered Object, 1975

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 33

6/03/2014 10:04 am

34

Touching and Imagining

licking the delicate coat of a smooth and slippery canary feeding dish, represents the very act of masturbation. The roll of randomly shaped wire, resembling a rational crutch, holds this decrepit construction in a vertical position. A regular waviness of the paper, like the disciplined arrangement of holes in the ventilator of the food cabinet, is analogous to the stereotypical mechanical activity. The sum total of these analogies, their reciprocal meeting in the space of the object mediated by a hand inserted into the sleeve, completes the object in a kind of subjective, irrational machinery of self-abuse. 1975 Vratislav Effenberger First tactile orientation: In the top left part is a cylindrical, wooden object, open on the right side and clutching a textile ball. On the top right side is a smaller, bell-like (maybe glass) object, inserted into another, metal object (in a manner of a water tap). In the centre is another wooden object giving the impression of a pair of open wings, connected by means of a wire to a metal can at the bottom left, out of which projects a kind of half-ball, either of wood or of some synthetic material. Downward on the right hand, the wire ends in a glass container on the bottom of which is some textile material. General impression: An irrational apparatus, reminiscent of Švankmajer’s masturbation machine. Analogical picture: Jan Švankmajer: Masturbation machine [Fig. 30]. Analogy: Water tap in the vicinity of a textile ball which is held in a wooden object; propeller  –  open wings; lantern – glass, bell-like object; cylinder in the bottom part – metal can; connection of meaningful, distant fragments – wires. Emila Medková From top left to right: A piece of old forked timber, at its end, a soft rag ball. Next is a water tap opening into a shallow container hidden behind a shoulder-bone. Wires project from the base of the bone and some kind of flat metal zigzags like a carpenter’s measure, ending in the right bottom corner in a porcelain container lined with shorthaired leather. In the left bottom corner is a larger tin can, hollow, on top of which is a wooden ball connected by wire to the bottom of a shoulder blade. The base of the tin can is structurally damaged. Everything is a little unstable. My first impression was of complete chaos, then I started to orient myself among all the wires and jars and suddenly it occurred to me that the only possible author of some analogy could be Francis Picabia. So I looked for the painting Parade Amoureuse that, in my judgement, closely relates to the tactile object and its functions.

Jiří Koubek

The first time I dragged my family to face the tactile box was on 4 July 1980. Then on 15 July of the same year I did the experiment myself. Shortly after that I was told of my wife’s and daughter’s (two-and-a-half years old) impressions. Lenka, 4 July: smilingly, she cried out: ‘Some glasses, there are some glasses there.’

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 34

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

30. The ‘Roman’ Ipsation Machine (collage), 1972.

35

31. Francis Picabia: Parade Amoureuse, 1917

Hana, my wife, 4 July: opined that there was prosthesis of the external male sex organs installed inside. 15 July, 9.15 a.m. circa five minutes: the first thing that occurred to me – a machine of some kind, then I elaborated by calling it some distillation apparatus, after Jules Verne’s fictional writings, in the Secret Island of engineer Cyrus Smith. Compared to the enclosed drawing [Fig. 32] it could be said that it is about some engineering reconstruction of an unknown technology. František Dryje The enclosed picture [Fig. 33] was not found on any basis of association that connected it with the researched tactile perception, but as a result of the analysis of that perception. In the closed space of the ‘tactile box’ my groping hand gradually identified several elementary components, the shape and characteristics of which I then looked for in appropriate illustrations. Firstly, there was a definite awareness of a trichotomy (meaning that the inside of the box was sectioned into top, middle and bottom parts) that was affecting my selection. In the illustration the trichotomy is expressed like this: The top part – head of a child and top half of an upside down chair; the middle and connecting part – trunk and arms of the child, barrel of the gun; and the bottom part – legs of the child, gun handle and an opened box. The illustration also contains a number of previously mentioned analogical elements of the tactile objects, even though they are not, as a rule, spatially distributed in an equal manner. They are: 1) Head of a child – analogy to two round shapes – ‘plush pom-pom’ top left and ‘wooden ball with fuzz’ inserted into a smooth ‘cylinder’ at bottom left.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 35

6/03/2014 10:04 am

32. J. K. 1. A pressure vessel of a heat reactor. 2. Glass retort for amplification of cooling circulation covered cloth. 3. Copper piping – heat exchanger. 4. Reactive sublimator – where the reactive material is stored. 5. Energy generator.

33. F. D.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 36

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

37

2) Gun barrel – analogy to variously profiled, evidently metal ‘tower’, top right. 3) Middle and handle of the gun – analogy to the continuation of the ‘tower’ in a double zigzag shape. 4) The complete gun – analogy to the connecting link between top and bottom parts, created by some ‘wire’, splitting itself and creating a ‘pear shape’. 5) Chubby arms of the child – analogy to two cylindrical shapes placed (horizontally) top left and (vertically) bottom left. 6) Opened box – analogy to evidently metal ‘containers’ of cubical shape and thick walls (‘soft padding’ is missing). 7) The child’s legs remind us – at least in their shape, narrowed from both sides towards the centre – of the wooden ‘toy boat’, elliptical and ‘hollowed out’ from both sides, and placed on the top right under the broken handle. Note: Considering that I did not know about the special orientation of the ‘box’, it is possible that what I perceived as the ‘top’ was actually the ‘bottom’ and vice versa. However: what is down is also up! Vince It is a perversion of the body, as if the animal skin was turned inside out, the upper part is of glass, the organs are permanently separated, the interior is dry like mummified fur. The false delicacy of the praying mantis, like a thermometer, like an antenna, measures the degree of terror, the start of the circle of unknown frequencies. One has to look for the source, to follow the direction of the infirm diviner; it is cold, the twists and turns of the ice-cold blood separate into two arteries, a thick one and a narrow one. The thick one leads to the organs resembling a mechanical hermaphrodite; the narrow one to a skull, where the exposed brain regulates the pulse rate. There is an impression that all this is not only happening here but that the pulsing leads from monster to monster. Penises and clitorises are surgically joined by unknown mechanisms. Fondling combines with cubes of ice and everything is getting bigger, the probing, finger-sized man, marching over sandpaper, is diminishing with each step. Even the most erotic area, right down below, is not undisturbed. Is it necessary to extricate one’s self from the genital organs so that everything opens? The organs are rising up towards our meeting. The pulsing is weaker but I am getting lost between lust and fear of surrendering to the desire to touch the mechanism.

34. G. D.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 37

35. M. D.

6/03/2014 10:04 am

38

Touching and Imagining

36. V.

Gilles Dunant The impossibility of getting through, of the existence that is slowly escaping. Everyone has a chance. An extreme brittleness of slightest movement combined with implacable attitude; from the gentlest fireworks to adventurous presentation of fragments of reality. A multitude of materials opens a world of invisible barriers, tremendous shocks and aftershocks fading into continual gesture. The human body, ever-present in its constant metamorphoses, exits from open boxes, sharp, liquid, solid, constantly separating so that they can exchange their positions. Articulation takes place without circulation, without moulding the shape of invisibility. Sometime it seems that it is submerging into a compact moving machine, the contact generating sound which instantly becomes past, becomes an echo. Deep down fingers signal desire. To reach this stage the object assumes, in its totality, an erotic certainty and from here on will be able to arouse signs of pleasure, each internal or external course as similar and as distant as is possible. Without pausing, we must follow everything in reverse. Now it is a memory slowly being forgotten, like an enchanted evening when thunder and shadows collide in a confused passion. There is no support to be found, arrows of darkness are criss-crossing behind closed eyes. Michel Dubret The tactile stroll opened slowly, as though damply wandering about without shipwrecking. Something is cruelly amusing itself here; incessantly it withdraws from the identification of whatever penetrates, or penetrates itself, until an attempt that frustrates the aim to spread its own movement. And very quickly we are engaged by ‘hand in the bag’ in hot ovens of sensuality and the grip of empty cramps. With full hands we touch the desired geography of our own repression. A double-entendre trap is sprung and opens up as unique encirclement and recapture. The spring is hot and dry as sand, in spite of the softness of its bed. And to touch it means to weaken through the fleeting, sleepless night. Proliferation, finally, leads to delusion, when the memory wanders, becomes fascinated until it is a pale residue in which everything again burns up in elementary stuttering, when all starts to vanish. The diffusion of analogical pictures concentrated by the game spans the spectrum from concrete, topographical ‘reading’, almost identical with the exposed object, to

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 38

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

39

quite free, abstract, rather emotional analogies. When, however, we combine them with the accompanying texts, with which the participants in the experiment interpret their tactile impressions of the object, we discover that almost all of them find associations with some fantastic erotic machine. Vratislav Effenberger and Emila Medková do so most obviously in their choice of analogical pictures. Vince and Gilles Dunant do so in their choice of interpretative text. Jiří Koubek selects as an analogical picture a kind of complicated construction or structure, (part of a three-dimensional model of a polymer) but in the accompanying text compares the object to a fantastic machine (see also the picture), which also suggests an erotic context. Even in Michael Dubret’s analogy, despite its very abstract position, one can read erotic excitement stimulated by tactile contact with the object. A noteworthy analogy is one by František Dryje, standing midway between analogies from concrete to abstract. Even when the verbal elaboration of pictorial analogy is predominantly topographical, the picture alone expresses the analogy not just of the basic theme of the object ‘masturbation’ but embraces even the mechanical moment of the object (a pistol) and further partial interpretation: a sense of instability and danger. 1981 Questionnaire about loathing In Tierra del Fuego, a native touched with his finger some cold, preserved meat which I was eating at our bivouac, and plainly showed utter disgust at its softness; whilst I felt utter disgust at my food being touched by a naked savage, though his hands did not appear dirty. But as disgust also causes annoyance, it is generally accompanied by a frown, and often by gestures as if to push away or to guard oneself against the offensive object. Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 18725 Questionnaire Are there any circumstances when you feel that your tactile abilities are 1)  hypersensitive? 2) Are there any a) structures, shapes or objects or b) living things that you loathe touching? 3) Would you characterize loathing more as repugnance (disgust) or fear of touching? 4) Do you recoil from accidental contact with an object that you loathe? (Are there reactions that you cannot control with your senses: gestures, nausea, allergic skin reactions or similar?) 5) During erotic play with your partner do you find some touching unbearable or repulsive? What loathsome experiences do you have in connection with sexuality? 6) Can you recall some experience that temporarily or permanently affected your tactile relationship to the surrounding environment? Are you able to analyse the origin of some concrete instance that aroused repugnance or fear of touching in you? 1980 Questionnaire respondants: Emila Medková, Jiří Koubek, Eva Švankmajerová, Albert Marenčin, Karol Baron, Martin Stejskal, František Dryje, Ludvík Šváb, Vratislav Effenberger, Jan Švankmajer.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 39

6/03/2014 10:04 am

40

Touching and Imagining

This questionnaire is deliberately concerned only with tactile expressions of loathing and consequential tactile sensibility. Its conclusions are, in my opinion, about loathing in all its tactile manifestations. Tactile expressions reveal this whole issue the most, because they are closest to sexuality, to which they are intimately related. The replies to the first question all tend to agree that the sense of touch basically intensifies at the same rate as the other senses under the same circumstances: tiredness, fever, depression, drug intoxication, after certain psychic trauma and, not least, in erotic play and sexual contact. Eva Švankmajerová During a blooming depression. Noise makes me capable of murder, gives me a terrible headache. Light makes me dizzy and bilious. I don’t touch anything except what I absolutely must. I head straight for bed, hide under my feather quilt and feather pillows. Clean, preferably. There, in the soft, dry and warm environment I try to overcome the aversion. If I am touched in that state – at that time, by a human hand, I feel like I am going insane with disgust. I must add that in practice nobody dares to do that, but it has happened and I want to emphasize that any such incident did not result in any administrative consequences. It does prove my infinite patience and good nature, for example towards people with whom I share the house and destiny and who have, on a number of occasions, approached me in my wretched state, tried to drag me out of my den and put me to some use, for example with pep talks or even caressing. None have come to any harm. Although they all know that when I am in that state of mind any tactile contact is negatively hypersensitive. Jan Švankmajer I feel a heightened perceptivity to tactile subjects under certain circumstances of weakened somatic organic functions (tiredness, fever), or, on the other hand, when my senses are actively aroused (erotic play). In the first instance, the tactile hypersensitivity is unpleasant (contact with clothes and bed covers is bothersome). In the second instance, the same engenders blissful excitement and a number of contacts, which would otherwise be unpleasant or painful, become exciting and desirable. Intake of alcohol lowers my tactile sensibility. Martin Stejskal I recall intoxication with psilocybin and LSD, during which my tactile sensibility became markedly heightened. In contrast to visual impressions that largely shattered in pictorial explosions, tactile impressions seemed to be closely connected with recognition of ‘transcendental’ capability. In that sense it meant pleasant conditions. Jiří Koubek Purely physiologically: Sometimes, rarely, during physical environmental change (heightened temperature or pulse), for instance when showering; as if the skin increased its perceptivity, the hairs seem to stand up. Psycho-physiologically: at a certain degree of trauma, stress (apprehension, fear of contact) or during erotic excitement. Albert Marenčin I am ticklish under my armpits, in my groin, and in the area of my chest; during erotic play this ticklishness increases to the point of being unbearable. At the same time my fingers become more sensitive so that I can ‘relish’ the body of my partner.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 40

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

41

I would particularly like to emphasise the heightening of tactile sensibility when touch is isolated from other senses, especially from sight. It is a matter of whether it is being used for a professional purpose in familiar surroundings, when it is felt to be quite natural (Emila Medková), or in unfamiliar surroundings when our orientation in space is dependent on touch, and so on. It is usually experienced ambivalently (Ludvík Šváb) or accompanied by fear (František Dryje). Emila Medková In my case it is years of practice in the dark room. I can orient myself in the dark with touch quite well and always considered it normal. Ludvík Šváb I would say that my tactile sensitivity (rather than ability) grows, which comes with learning from experiments with sense deprivation – when other objects are excluded. Practically, that is when I am in bed at night, unable to sleep. Such sensations are pleasant and unpleasant, for instance even a crinkled up bed sheet and contact with coarse material of the sofa underneath can be bothersome, whilst I feel good in freshly laundered, fine bed sheets. Skin sensitivity also increases with fever. František Dryje . . . when I have to move in the darkness. When awake or in one of my recurring dreams, I walk along a certain street and I can’t open my eyes – when I do open them, I can’t see, I have to grope my way. The dream is accompanied by fear of going blind, and also of alien touch. In most instances the heightened tactile sensibility is felt as unpleasant, or at least ambivalent, with the exception of erotic play or sexual act when it is considered desirable and increases the pleasure. In two cases the answer to the first question was negative. Karol Baron I think they don’t exist, if they do I am not consciously aware of them. Vratislav Effenberger I have to admit that my reaction to tactile perceptions and objects is minimal. Naturally there is a whole list of things that I could touch only with the utmost repulsion. Conversely, I am not conscious of touching any objects with particular pleasure, with the exception of a revolver. In the answers to the second question all participants agreed that excrement in particular arouses disgust, or objects such as mud, vomit, decaying and decomposing organisms, et cetera, and dirtiness of all kinds. Eva Švankmajerová There are turds and phlegm which we loathe to touch. Albert Marenčin Unfamiliar greasy or sticky substances of animal temperature, which inspire feelings of uncertainty at the same time.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 41

6/03/2014 10:04 am

42

Touching and Imagining

Vratislav Effenberger Among the structures, shapes and objects that I loathe to touch belong faeces, vomit, soft dirt and so on. František Dryje Excrement, mud (for instance at the bottom of the swimming pond), decomposing bodies of animals or people (when accompanied by visual perception). Martin Stejskal Decaying objects, especially of viscous composition, mixed with hair. Strangers’ teeth. Jiří Koubek Certain microstructures – such as maggots, insects, single cell organisms (microphotons), then decaying, decomposing organisms, perhaps rashes, visible pimples and boils on people and farm animals. More loathing in relation to animal organisms than to vegetable ones. Non-organic objects in general do not arouse such feelings in me. Emila Medková I specifically dislike the touch of unwashed hair, even my own. Contact with all synthetic matter, cups, bags or plastic repulses me. Jan Švankmajer I have an unbearable repulsion to boiled onions – not just because I have never seen them but because I find them highly repulsive even to touch, similarly the skin on milk. I loathe cigarettes, not only the butts, but even unsmoked cigarettes I can touch only by overcoming my repulsion. I dislike mud, especially in contact with feet, I dislike the fat from dishwashing, other people’s underwear, regardless of whether it is used or clean. I have a certain ‘value scale’ of loathing; there are objects that I can touch after some mastery of the revulsion. Some objects are unpleasant, but I do touch them (always conscious that I am touching them), then there are some that I cannot touch under any circumstances: other people’s snot, semen, urine, faeces. Towards my own excretions I also feel a certain disgust, which I would characterize as surmountable. In the above answers there are only a few items that are not generally regarded as repulsive (synthetic matter – Emila Medková, cigarettes – Jan Švankmajer, strangers’ teeth – Martin Stejskal). With these objects it is not a case of ‘deep’, essential repulsion but of ‘pseudorepulsion’ (as characterized by František Dryje) because it is acquired later than the true repulsion and usually for different reasons. It is usually connected to concrete events or specific persons, or analogous to the actual cause of repulsion (for instance my attitude to cigarettes relates to my pubertal rebellion against my father who was a smoker). Jiří Koubek Around the age of my puberty, when I believed I was being stifled by my parents but was too cowardly to leave home, I began to find both of them repulsive. That attitude, since I have moved away from them, has passed, or, perhaps it is more appropriate to say, has been submerged. At the time it was perhaps my mother, in her underwear or my father, who did gymnastics. Because he used to exercise in the morning, at around five, and I started school later, it used to wake me up. His masochistic health ritual, his panting while straining muscles, his jumping around and so on used to drive me crazy

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 42

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

43

with repulsion. I used to put a pillow over my head, wishing that he would die. All that exercising was revolting and embarrassing; so public and anti-social. (I didn’t develop a hatred towards sports, as the above description might suggest, merely towards that blatant exhibitionism.) This image of the father exercising in front of the children, propagated in Spartakiads [premier sporting contests in the Czech Republic] and on television (parents exercising with their children) fills me with disgust to this day. František Dryje I believe that repulsion about touching can be overcome in most cases (not just with sex) and eventually eliminated altogether. Often it is a case of overcoming the initial disgust (fear) and, so to speak, taking the first step. Experiences of medical undergraduates overcoming repugnance (often an actual physical reaction) during dissection are well known. It must be acknowledged that such a thing as ‘insurmountable repulsion’ does exist, perhaps best described as a ‘neurotic symptom’ and more than likely, this has deeper, unconscious roots. Perhaps it is only that kind of repulsion that is a true one, as distinct from the one that is ‘surmountable’. Similarly there is a substantial agreement about living organisms that we find loathsome. Firstly there are snakes, maggots or earthworms and similar animals (Albert Marenčin, Jan Švankmajer, Emila Medková, Ludvík Šváb, Vratislav Effenberger, Jiří Koubek, Martin Stejskal), then insects of all kinds, spiders especially (Eva Švankmajerová, Jan Švankmajer, Emila Medková, Martin Stejskal, Jiří Koubek, František Dryje), mice, rats, bats (Albert Marenčin, Eva Švankmajerová, Jan Švankmajer, Emila Medková, Ludvík Šváb), also fish and other sea creatures, frogs, snails and so on (Jan Švankmajer, Emila Medková, Vratislav Effenberger, Martin Stejskal) and birds (Ludvík Šváb, Jan Švankmajer). Replies Emila Medková With me it is the experience of touch. I can tell the difference between the fur of a rabbit and a rat, although even the rabbit is not very pleasant to me. If I see a mouse, frog, snake or a spider I give them a wide berth or even run away. I am even repulsed by dead animals, but not by the stuffed ones. In one case, something which did happen to me, when a mouse found its way into my hair which I had left untied for sleeping (it was on an agricultural brigade in Southern Bohemia), I mercilessly chased it and killed it. Equally, I will kill even a large spider that petrifies me even though I would never touch it. Martin Stejskal In the case of insects, it is a deep loathing (disgust) aroused by even a mere image of touching them. In case of some sea creatures, it is a more ambivalent attitude – fear of contact and urging towards it. Squeamishness towards spiders is psychoanalytically regarded as fear of the female sex. ‘Dreaming of a spider is a symbol of the Phallic Mother, of which one is afraid and so fear of spiders expresses fear of incest and terror of female genitalia’ (Abraham, 1922). In my childhood, I had a major conflict over the spider versus cat issue. The delicious furriness of cats, of which there have always been plenty in our household, contrasted with the repulsion towards ‘hairy’ spiders. (The more hairy the spider, the more repulsive.) To this day a cat, to me, represents a female, a kind of archetypal mother. Once we had a kitten named Cobweb, which I was very fond of. Without any warning my mother had it destroyed, just before the birth of my sister. I remember that it put me into a deep shock.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 43

6/03/2014 10:04 am

44

Touching and Imagining

Vratislav Effenberger Living beings whose surface is slimy (snakes, snails, fish); then also animals which appear deformed (frogs, toads) . . . If I remember correctly the only concrete tactile revulsion I experienced was towards fish, namely the Christmas carp kept in the bath. In my childhood I was tempted to overcome the revulsion and touch that stupid creature, immobile against the side of the bath, with a snout that every now and then opened lazily, as if shouting some pathetic curse. Its slimy immobility was just pretence, it took only the slightest touch with my hand and the whole carp body leapt into action with lightning speed, as only the angriest desperation is capable of. In a second, the repulsion to touch the slimy thing was overtaken by terror and panic and prevented any further aggression towards that dangerous monster. Karol Baron More than twenty years ago I saw a dog in a village somewhere in eastern Slovakia, some short haired mongrel, it was a relatively large dog, with several bare patches on its skin, the patches were infected, in places showing raw, rotting, fly-blown flesh. It was standing about six, ten meters at the most, away from me. Looking at it I felt absolute revulsion, my stomach turned as if it suddenly was in some fluid and started to swim in it, and parallel with that I felt indescribable, unconscious fear that even now I could not specify accurately. Altogether, for several seconds I felt paralyzed, unable to move; maybe it was only a dream. Albert Marenčin Rats and snakes. As a boy I enjoyed catching fish, my favourite way was to blindly search with my hand under rocks and tree roots. Once I felt something hairy and slippery; as I touched it the strange animal moved sharply, stirred up the water and with a splash disappeared. Startled and terrified I jumped out of the water. A sense of revulsion and panic increased when my uncle informed me that I probably touched a water rat and that I could, fishing in that manner, disturb a snake. Since that day I didn’t dare to catch any fish in that way. A similar feeling now overcomes me when I hear of likewise situations. To put my hand into some cavity into which I cannot see, into a hollow tree, a gum boot, any kind of a hole, and find something there that is alive, warm, hairy or slimy is the most revolting thing I can imagine. František Dryje Snakes, earthworms, maggots, insects that swarm (ants), mangy animals, people infected with skin diseases (rash, pimples and similar – probably accompanied by visual perception). I was about ten years old when for the first time I saw two snakes in a forest. They were white (probably blind worms, not really snakes) and crawling across a rocky bottom of a dry creek. I felt terror, revulsion, fear, and disgust. These feelings were certainly aroused by visual perception, but I do remember that the mere thought of physical contact amplified them. I have similar experiences even now. The psychoanalytical symbolism, in this case, undoubtedly offers an excellent aid to such a repulsion, but for me, at that time it was a substantive fear (an inner, conscious, conditional revulsion) of snake bite, which I was conscious of for a number of years since my childhood, nourished by stories (from parents), and later by reading, of deadly consequences, of first aid (applying tourniquet above the bite), of prevention (carry a stick) in the spirit of simplistic aids like ‘Doctor talks with children’ and similar. I know that I was always terrified by the thought of how easy it is to step on a snake,

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 44

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

45

to be bitten and die helplessly in a deep forest. I dare to say that the above experience was primary and it still defines my attitude (and even the tactile perception) toward snakes to this day. (Most likely it is a case of ‘pseudo-revulsion’, considering that when I observe snakes in a terrarium, snakes that cannot do me any harm, I look at them without any fear at all.) I have never held a snake in my hands, I would not recognize its skin by touch. However, several times I have had to overcome my revulsion towards earthworms or maggots. The most unpleasant was not the actual touching of their bodies but the fact that they were moving, ‘wriggling’. I always feel that maybe they will bite me. So perhaps it is fear. Dead specimens worry me less. Ludvík Šváb Squeamishness is aroused in me by all textures, shapes and objects that remind me of living creatures, mice, reptiles and birds – and particularly so when I touch them without seeing them – in the dark, in a bag, in Švankmajer’s arrangement of tactile objects. I must have been afraid of mice and birds for a long time. I remember how once, on a Sunday, when I was a small boy I had to go and collect something for my father from our shop. I only had keys to the back entrance, to get into the storage, into complete darkness. The light switch was on the other side of the room. I turned the light on, found what I was looking for, then turned to go home. As I turned the light out, I was overcome with fear that a rat or something might jump at me in the darkness. Today I don’t remember if I only imagined it but I felt that something jumped on my foot. With a scream I shot out through the back door and trembled with terror and revulsion all the way home. I doubt if I would have been able to differentiate between a touch of the rat, rabbit or some other animal. A rat gives me a feeling of moistness, probably something to do with my mother’s favourite expression: ‘I’m as wet with sweat as a mouse.’ Eva Švankmajerová There are insects and rodents that we loathe to touch. There are many public places where we wouldn’t touch anything. There are many households where we despair if we must visit, eat, drink and touch objects or hands of the occupiers. Jan Švankmajer Of all the animals I loathe most to touch are insects (flies, spiders, bees, caterpillars and even butterflies), then mice, frogs, snakes, and bats. Birds’ claws repel me, otherwise I don’t mind them, in dogs I don’t like the hairless patches on their bellies, in tortoises I can touch only their shells, etc. I don’t like touching people, above all people with whom I have no emotional connection, even children. I loathe men kissing men. Jiří Koubek Cripples, deformed people, dwarfs, obvious pathological abnormalities . . . Then continues with squeamishness into psycho-social field: . . . notorious lying, cheating, obsequiousness, and even certain modes of existence: military service (because it is homosexual by nature), policemen. Vratislav Effenberger I was about six years old when early one morning I sneaked into my father’s study, next to the bedroom, took from his coat a loaded revolver and quickly returned to bed. No sooner did I pull out the magazine when I heard a door opening and my father going into

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 45

6/03/2014 10:04 am

46

Touching and Imagining

the study; I had no time to return the revolver. Quickly I concealed it under the quilt, anxiously hoping that he would not notice his coat. On the contrary! He went straight to his coat and reached into the pocket on which my eyes were riveted. Fear swept over me. Father, concerned, reached into the other coat pocket, then started to rummage in his desk. I lost my courage and confessed that I had the gun in bed with me. It gave father such a fright that he didn’t even scold me over it. Instead I was given a lecture on the danger of what I did. Little did he know that, whenever I was sure he was away from home for some time, I used to get his army pistol out of the cabinet, in comparison to which the pocket Browning, which I was shamefully returning to him, was a mere toy… The excitement (which persists today) I felt when holding the gun in my hand, undoubtedly has some unconscious sexual motivations. This excitement is reinforced by the tactile feel, by the hand gripping the cold metal so perfectly shaped to wrap fingers around it, as if it was an ideal ending for the right hand. Perhaps some role is played in the psychosocial plan by the fact that the history of humankind is the history of a forceful triumph where the killing blow is the final argument. Certainly this excitement is not connected for me with any repulsion or fear. The replies suggest that pleasant tactile sensations have conscious (Albert Marenčin, Jan Švankmajer) or unconscious (Vratislav Effenberger) sexual motivations. Whence do the motivations for unpleasant tactile sensations come? It seems as if specific things or creatures from times immemorial have repulsed us, and we cannot imagine the origins of it. Are they based on some early childhood experiences that have long gone from our memories or is it a case of some archetypal structures and shapes of fear and repulsion, common to all humankind and simply inherited in our genetic code, similar, for instance, to the schemata of the mother’s face? Or is Roger Caillois correct when he writes: ‘. . . true, certain creatures seem so hideous or repulsive – bats, spiders, octopuses, snakes. But they are not ugly. They arouse fear and terror in us, sometimes justifiably, more frequently because some superstitions make them fearsome. Mythology seems more important than their appearance. It is not their disproportion that terrifies but mysterious notions of associations, or completely imaginative prejudices that we become victims of as they arouse panic, surge of repulsion, almost physical reaction which does not come from aesthetic considerations. They seem to come from some other field of sensibility, from animal depths.’  6 (It is interesting that the position of these creatures in myths and fairy tales is quite ambivalent. Snake is a symbol of wisdom on one hand, on the other a symbol of treachery. Mouse is a symbol of cowardly hypocrisy and also a form of endearment for a beloved woman ‘a little mouse’. A toad – an insult for an old ugly woman – a frog is a reference to a young girl and so on.) When recalling some initial experience of squeamishness, the memory often deceives us. Vratislav Effenberger As to the origins of feeling of disgust and revulsion, perhaps because they are so common, I cannot recall a single concrete case of how they came about. Karol Baron I don’t have any concrete examples or maybe I have forgotten them. Jiří Koubek That is a question that provokes some deep thinking. In my childhood I was either very dumb or very tolerant of things and people around me. Or the barriers don’t let me go there.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 46

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

47

Ludvík Šváb To think of some primeval, essential repulsion, I consider that a kind of method with which I can make myself to imagine some doubtful images, false memories, or distorted interpretations . . . Jan Švankmajer It seems that the origins of all my repulsions are disappearing into the fog of childhood and are hidden by a curtain of amnesia that I am unable to draw back. The instances that are being investigated by the questionnaire have their roots in the times when the sense of repulsion was established and has since then been transferred through analogy to other subjects or objects. Emila Medková An experience from the age of eight: A girl of the same age as myself, living in the basement of our apartment block, invited me to her home. She let me wait outside the door and when, after a while, she returned, we went to play outside. She asked me to reach into her pocket, said that there was something very good there. I felt some vague substance that immediately stuck to my fingers and smelled repulsive. The girl told me to taste it, that it was very good peas. I trembled with repulsion, my stomach was heaving, I ran home to wash it all off. This one occasion of contact with peas resulted in many years of repulsion to them in any form. To a complementary question: What did she think was in the girl’s pocket, Emila Medková replied: ‘I only know that I was trembling with repulsion, most likely I was terrified that she had a turd in her pocket.’ Similar to the occasions described above, be it František Dryje’s white snakes, Vratislav Effenberger’s fish or Ludvík Šváb’s and Albert Marenčin’s rat, are the memories of concrete experiences of revulsion, not the actual experiences which created it. Revulsion in sexuality: From a number of answers to that query there seems to be above all repugnance to homosexual contact (in any form – Karol Baron, Jiří Koubek, Jan Švankmajer, František Dryje, Ludvík Šváb). Otherwise, revulsion in sexuality is not experienced by the majority of those who responded (excepting specifics such as one’s partner’s cold feet – Jan Švankmajer). Jiří Koubek I’m disgusted by the thought that I should be making love to a woman who has not washed herself. What is interesting is that this revulsion doesn’t apply out in the open. It is only fixated to ‘home, room, bed’. František Dryje I’m not very keen on having my ear kissed. I wouldn’t call this feeling one of revulsion, since kissing, as such, does not revolt me. Perhaps it is a case of ‘ear revulsion’. Intolerance of tickling and stroking during sexual contact (Albert Marenčin, Ludvík Šváb) is difficult to regard as revulsion. From that point of view two answers are interesting:

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 47

6/03/2014 10:04 am

48

Touching and Imagining

37. Eva Švankmajerová: Bat (oil), 1970

Martin Stejskal I can’t regard any sort of touching from one’s partner during erotic play as unbearable or even repugnant. I have an ambivalent attitude to cleanliness. Grubbiness excites me; at the same time it repulses me. Jan Švankmajer During sexual excitement I lose all taboos about repulsion, on the contrary some of the sources of repulsion become exciting precisely because under normal circumstances they are taboo. I even get excited by the thought of having sex on top of boiled onions. When asked if revulsion is felt as disgust or fear of contact, all participants agree that they feel both, disgust and fear. It is interesting that disgust, with most of them, feels like some primary instinct, and fear arises in cases when in some way there is a direct contact with an object or a creature that has been made ‘taboo’ by repulsion or when imagining such a contact.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 48

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

49

Jiří Koubek When the question is put so directly, I prefer to characterize revulsion as repugnance and springing out of it, secondarily, sub-dominant cases such as, for instance, the cited fear of contact. They are interconnected. In a similar way Vratislav Effenberger, in a direct answer, characterizes revulsion as repugnance (disgust), but in his childhood experience with the Christmas carp describes the resulting feeling of fear after the actual contact: ‘The repulsion to touching the slimy thing was overtaken by terror and panic and prevented any further aggression towards that dangerous monster.’ A connection between the feeling of disgust and fear, and the source of revulsion, also affirms the answers to the control query (question 4). The described defensive reflexes during the chance contact with the object of revulsion do not after all, depart from the characteristic disgust and fear posited by Charles Darwin. It seems (as the answers to the sixth question of the questionnaire suggest) that the defining experiences originated in early childhood, up to five or six years of age, and then were shrouded over by amnesia which, according to Freud, hides all our pre-sexual experiences and represses them into the unconscious. All other experiences described (František Dryje, Emila Medková, Vratislav Effenberger, Karol Baron, Albert Marenčin) are from later years and clearly show that by then the revulsion was well fixated, that they were not the establishing experiences. Our parents force our revulsion to excrement on us in early childhood, in the interest of hygiene. Leaving aside the psychoanalytical explanation of such interest, little children do not have this kind of revulsion; on the contrary, behind their parents’ backs the excrement is often a welcomed toy. Because we are not receptive to rational arguments at that early age, it is understandable that our upbringing by our parents regarding cleanliness is achieved by emotional means, emotional pressure. And so gradually we develop revulsion with a strong emotional content, which is often not easy to overcome rationally. Likewise, with a whole spectrum of revulsions: one sexual symbol after another (for instance Martin Stejskal’s spiders, not to mention snakes, earthworms, maggots and fish), this revulsion later emerges in early genital organization of the libido when the first parental censures against masturbation appear, and this is a product of the castration complex. Revulsion is a reaction to unconscious excitation of repressed infantile sexuality. A question then arises whether revulsion is more like repugnance (disgust) or fear of touching. The majority of participants connect the two feelings, or perhaps more accurately, feel both. It is obvious that beneath the guise of fear is a memory of punishment for forbidden touching, not so much for touching but of punishment that might follow. Some support for this explanation is the ambivalence towards the objects of repulsion that some describe, and that repulsion recedes into the background during erotic play and the sexual act, disappears altogether, or even contributes to the excitement. ‘Essential’ revulsion has several tiers, closely related to Freud’s partition of childhood sexuality. The deepest tier is, for instance, the repulsion towards milk skin, originating in traumatic weaning from the mother’s breast.7 The next section deals with our repugnance to excrement that is the basis of all our eventual squeamishness regarding cleanliness. Revulsion to excrement is then obviously the result (product) of repressing the libido’s sado-anal sexual organization. The internally repressed remainder of the sado-anal stage of childhood sexuality simultaneously carries with it a condition of overcoming it. The zodiac of squeamishness, originating in the early (childhood) phase of genital organization of the libido, quite obviously relates to the castration complex. Here this squeamishness is expressed mainly by emotional pressure (threats that masturbation

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 49

6/03/2014 10:04 am

50

Touching and Imagining

38. Salvador Dalí: Hand with Fish (drawing), n. d.

or attempts at it will be punished by castration) even though arguments against pre-pubertal and pubertal development lose their effectiveness and are replaced by moralizing. In spite of this the initial squeamishness, accompanied by fear of punishment does retain certain energy, certain unconscious effectiveness, where the original source is buried in childhood amnesia and for which it is necessary to find a new explanation and to rationalize the feeling. And here starts the fear of snakebite, fear of infection etc. That such fear is a secondary processing of the original effect is evident from the fact that fear of dangerous animals is usually not accompanied by disgust. František Dryje provided another indirect proof with his answer to the questionnaire. What does his fear of above all, wriggling maggots, earthworms and caterpillars mean? Is it not a fixated fear of erection caused by manipulation of the penis while masturbating? Alternatively, ‘dead specimens worry me less’ means touching the penis when urinating or other non-sexual activity (washing) was not condemned and punished by the parents. It seems that even Ladislav Klíma, when he considered it mandatory in his ‘My Own Biography’ to boast that, in the extreme days of his egotistical experiments, he ‘devoured a mouse, pelt and bones, like a dumpling’. He saw the overcoming of squeamishness as a liberating act. Squeamishness can be regarded as some PREPHASE OF SUPEREGO or INFANTILE SUPEREGO. In every case, squeamishness is an unconscious part of the repressive apparatus of our psyche.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 50

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

51

I am aware that this psychoanalytical explanation of squeamishness is here dealt with very briefly and demands a deeper, more detailed examination; it does not explain all aspects of squeamishness, only peripherally touching on the later rationalization or on the ways it develops into morality, and how it leaves aside its relationship to shame and similar feelings. As my questionnaire was not seeking any scientific or therapeutic goals, but goals relating immediately to my tactile experimentation, it was sufficient for me to extract certain conclusions regarding fundamental questions about the existence of tactile art. There is no doubt that the primary reason for squeamishness is played by touch; other senses contribute later, not just smell and taste but also sight. The questionnaire also showed that there is a tactile memory that is essential for the existence of tactile art, and that this ‘memory’ reaches into the remotest regions of our unconsciousness. It also showed that all people have repressed primary tactile experiences. All this has an important significance for objectifying the subjective tactile beginnings incited by tactile art, and generally for communication of tactile art. Secondly, tactile feelings, pleasant and unpleasant, have a strong emotional content which, coming as they do from early childhood, cannot be controlled by reason. It is a major input into the tactile art heritage that should guarantee its anti-artistic foundation. As our pleasant and unpleasant tactile feelings spring from one source, eroticism, they create ambivalent experiencing of tactile objects (represented by tactile art, not by utilitarian practice), which warrants certain ‘depth of perception’, since it creates in our tactile feelings a dialectical tension. Some answers again confirmed that touch, isolated from other senses, sensitizes automatically. On the other hand, the questionnaire indicated that a strongly developed squeamishness can, in tactile art, become a barrier. It also appears that in some people one has to count on a certain tactile insensitivity or that tactile contact on any basis other than utilitarian will be difficult for them because it will assume an inner consciousness of touch as a separate sense. It may be necessary to tear touch away from its utilitarian dependence on other senses, above all on sight – to ‘un-civilize itself ’. 1981

39. Father and Son (stereophotography for two hands), 1994

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 51

6/03/2014 10:04 am

52

Touching and Imagining

Tactile dream In dreams, as in our waking hours, the referring nerves signal to us every deviation from the normal function of organs; in dreams, as in waking hours, the brain centres reacts to such signals with images associated with feelings, which in turn cause other feelings; in dreams, as in waking hours, such images announce either their organic causes or their purposeful directive to a motor reaction, or both of these, causal and final, in a variously graduated relationship; in dreams ‘the signal’ normally remains only with the notion, exaggerated in its sensory elements, graded on a scale into expressions of intensity that hallucinate into living visuals, whilst in waking a much less visual notion normally belongs to a temporary, much more adequate and transient mechanism, activating the motor reaction. Záviš Kalandra, The Reality of Dream, 19478 So far as we have hitherto analysed the material of dreams, we have seen it as a collection of psychical residues and memory-traces, to which (on account of the preference shown for recent and infantile material) we have been led to attribute a hitherto indefinable quality of being ‘currently active’. We can foresee, then, without any great difficulty, what will happen if fresh material in the form of sensations is added during sleep to these currently active memories. It is once again owing to the fact of their being currently active that these sensory excitations are of importance for the dream; they are united with the other currently active psychical material to furnish what is used for the construction of the dream. Putting it another way, stimuli arising during sleep are worked up into a wishfulfilment, the other constituents of which are the familiar psychical ‘day residues’. This combination need not occur; as I have already pointed out, there is more than one way of reacting to a somatic stimulus during sleep. When it does occur, it means that it has been possible to find conceptual material of such a sort to serve as the content of the dream, that it is able to represent both kinds of source of the dream – the somatic and the physical. The essential nature of the dream is not altered by the fact of somatic material being added to its physical sources: a dream remains the fulfilment of a wish, no matter in what way the expression of that wish-fulfilment is determined by the currently active material. I am prepared to leave room at this point for the notion that the operation of a number of special factors which can lend a varying importance to external stimuli in relation to dreams. As I picture it, a combination of individual factors, physiological and accidental, produced by the circumstances of the moment, is what determines how a person shall behave in particular cases of comparatively intense objective stimulation during sleep. The habitual or accidental depth of his sleep, taken in conjunction with the intensity of the stimulus, will make it possible in one case for him to suppress the stimulus so that his sleep is not interrupted and in another case will compel him to wake up or will encourage an attempt to overcome the stimulus by weaving it into a dream. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 19009

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 52

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

40. Illusion (engraving, eighteenth century)

53

41. François Boucher: Le Prélude (engraving, eighteenth century)

Tactile dreams can be characterized: 1) As dreams wherein we experience or feel tactile and touching sensations. 2) As dreams wherein a sensory dream impulse (stimulus) is visualized and modifies the manifest content of the dream. 1. Dreams with strong tactile feelings It is generally known that the individual senses are not represented in dreams equally. Statistically, tactile dreams come third, after ‘visual’ and ‘aural’ dreams. Tactile perceptions occur in about a quarter of our dreams. Visual perceptions occur in almost one hundred per cent of all dreams, aural perceptions in sixty-to-seventy per cent, smell and taste in only five per cent of dreams. Morning. At home. A room not dissimilar to mine but getting larger. It is still dark. From my bed I see two girls in the left corner, about two and six years old, getting ready to play. I know that I have taken some hashish and that their existence is a complete hallucination. Both girls are naked, creating a white, moving, harmonious whole. It’s a pity that I was asleep, the effect of hashish will probably soon wear off. I talk to the children and invite them to get up onto my bed, which they do. What a strange feeling of reality this is! I am pointing out to someone, who could be Paul Eluard, that I am touching them (and indeed I feel that I am grasping their forearms near their wrists) that it’s not at all like a dream, when the sensation is more or less veiled, when there is an undefined element missing, something that has a specific quality of real sensation, when it is never as if we ‘truly’ prick or pinch ourselves. On the contrary, here, there is no difference. It is reality itself, an absolute reality. The smaller child, sitting astride of me, presses down on me with her full weight that I can estimate quite accurately. She really exists. As I become aware of it, I succumb to a magical feeling (the most intense feeling I’ve had in any dream). I am not at all sexually aroused by what transpired. A sensation of warmth and moisture on my left brings me to full consciousness. One of the children has wet herself. At the same time they both vanish. André Breton: ‘Fragment of a Dream, 5 April 1931’10

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 53

6/03/2014 10:04 am

54

Touching and Imagining

1 November 1981 I am on a riverbank, fishing. I have a feeling of happiness. The sun is shining, I feel warm and fresh. Everything around me is exceptionally green. On the fishhooks hang policemen and I wait. I pick up some river stones in my hands, feeling their smoothness and accumulated warmth from the sun. I notice that a policeman on the fishing line has suddenly moved, I grab the rod, pull hard and start winding in. Out of the cobaltblue water emerges a large glistening carp, with a wavy, light red line across the centre of the body. I pull it out of the water and grab it. I am afraid that it might escape me, I hold it down, feel it thrashing under me, and I try to grasp it firmly in my hands. I feel the carp’s body, its scales which are digging under my fingernails, its slipperiness and sliminess. I stand up and realize that there is no carp. My hands and chest are completely covered with thick chocolate sauce, it’s dribbling out of my hands. I rub my hands together, they slide – I say to myself ‘so that’s it’ and begin to dance. Karol Baron Among the dreams in which distinctive tactile feelings of the dreamer appear and which are not brought about by external stimuli, one ought to, in the first instance, include dreams that are lucid. In the ‘waking’ part of the dream the evidence of ‘I am not dreaming’ can be proof of its non-visual character (pinching one self, to realize that we are not dreaming or simply expressing tactile or some other sensual quality of our behaviour). 19 May 1976 I am visiting a friend of mine who now lives in Switzerland. Verunka is with me. I dream that my friend is describing a cabaret item to me that he is supposed to direct, and that seems to him quite stupid. On the stage lies a woman with long, blond hair, dressed in a seventeenth-century costume. Around her runs a lion that suddenly loses its head; however, underneath there is a tiger’s head. The lion’s head sneaks up on the tiger and bites its head off (I dream all this as related by my friend, as if I already saw it all happening on the stage). The tiger’s body, minus head and tail, creeps to the lying woman. From the tiger’s rectum emerges a snake and winds itself around the woman. At that moment the item is to end with an unexpected event – the doorbell of the woman’s apartment rings and guests arrive. In that moment my dream ends in a dream. I ‘wake up’ and look for a pencil and a notebook to write the dream down. The pencil and the notebook, however, are not where they should be. I swear profoundly and search my friend’s apartment. Verunka is laughing at me. I have woken up the friend’s entire family. Desperately, I continue searching for any piece of paper on which I could record the dream while I am quietly memorizing it for myself so I won’t forget it. All I am finding are papers already used. My friend tells me that I am unlikely to find a blank piece of paper in his place. I despair, fearing that unless I do find a piece of paper I will forget the dream. Then I am searching for a piece of paper on some train. I keep opening and closing the window and looking for some paper in its frame. I worry that the train will start moving with me on it. I wake up, exhausted. Jan Švankmajer Under certain circumstances reproduction of sounds occurs in dreams, sounds that up to that time were dormant in some tactile unconscious. It often happens that till then an indifferent part of the body (which clearly doesn’t belong among the erogenous zones) finds itself at the intersection of excitement, in a dominant position, sometimes representing sexual organs (for

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 54

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

55

example the fantastic coitus in the film Barbarella) and reproduces hidden tactile sensation. Examples of another kind are ‘oral dreams’ in which the main role is taken by tactile sensations on tongue and teeth. From my experience they belong to the most archaic dreams and are often accompanied by fear of being gagged by meat and overcome by lack of space. A dream, which repeatedly came to me, had a very simple theme. I was struggling my way through ‘massive quilts’, as if I was in the innards of some body. After each ‘quilt’ another one appeared, and another one again. The dream was accompanied by great anxiety. Every evening, before I went to sleep, I feared that I would dream it again and maybe just because of that, it kept coming back. Later on, I interpreted it to myself as an echo of the birth trauma. Later still, I realized that there was some relationship between this dream and pre-sleep pressure of the tongue against the roof of my mouth and teeth. Martin Stejskal, 1977 To this category of tactile dreams, except for the dreams evoking infantile oral experiences and lucid dreams, belongs also the majority of erotic dreams. Understandably, since the physical sense plays a dominant role in eroticism. 25–26 January 1960 I don’t recall the first part of the dream that brought me into some room I did not remember. I am standing here, feeling small, but with a massive, erect penis and some naked youth, whom I cannot adequately identify, although he has very distinctive features, is crawling towards me on his knees. I feel very excited and am unable to move. The more I feel that I am closer to ejaculation the more I fear that it will happen before the youth gets to me, and with this growing feeling the dream is becoming more and more concrete and three dimensional. The youth’s eyes betray that he is nearing me precisely because he knows of my imminent ejaculation. The tension is increasing second by second. In the nick of time he reaches me, grabs my penis into his mouth and at that moment I feel the painful delight that accompanies the onset of ejaculation. Vratislav Effenberger It can be assumed that a part of such dreams (dreams with strong tactile feelings) perhaps falls into the following category of tactile dreams (dreams affected by sensory impulses), since it cannot be excluded that at the origin of the dream there was some objective tactile impulse, which was not noted on waking or disappeared during the dreaming. 2. Dreams brought about by objective, more or less accidental stimulation of physical sense About twenty years ago, I used to read aloud to my mother and frequently I started to nod off at the pauses, after each paragraph. I came to very quickly, so much so that mother only noted that I sometimes read somewhat slowly. During these seconds of sleep, which no sooner started than they were interrupted by the need to continue reading, I had quite extensive dreams, mixing them up with usually decreased comprehension of the book. I shall relate an occasion that to me appears decisive for the speed of dreaming and confirms, in my eyes, that a mere moment is enough to allow an extensive dream to take place. I was somewhat unwell, lying in my room and my mother was at the head of the bed. I dreamt of the days of terror; I was present at bloody scenes, I faced the revolutionary tribunal,

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 55

6/03/2014 10:04 am

56

Touching and Imagining

saw Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier-Tinville, all the terrible persons of that awful epoch; I carried on discussions with them, then eventually, after many incidents which I recollect only imperfectly, was tried, sentenced to death, transported in the execution cart through the throngs of shouting people to the Place de Revolution; I ascended the scaffold, the executioner assisted me to lie down on the board, released the guillotine, the blade fell and I felt my head being separated from my body. I woke up in utmost apprehension, feeling an iron rod, a part of the bed, which suddenly came loose, resting on my neck as if it was a guillotine. All that happened in a fraction of time, my mother assured me; it was the external sensation which became the impetus to all the above, the first moment of the dream which was followed by a number of other events. The moment when I was struck brought the recall of that terrible machine so well represented by the rod and initiated the images of that time, symbolized by the guillotine. Alfred Maury, Sleep and Dreams, 186111 I was riding on a grey horse, timidly and awkwardly to begin with, as though I were only reclining upon it. I met one of my colleagues, P., who was sitting high on a horse, dressed in a tweed suit, and who drew my attention to something (probably to my bad seat). I now began to find myself sitting more and more firmly and comfortably on my highly intelligent horse, and noticed that I was feeling quite at home up there. My saddle was a kind of bolster, which completely filled the space between its neck and crupper. In this way I rode straight in between two vans. After riding some distance up the street, I turned round and tried to dismount, first in front of a small open chapel that stood in the street frontage. Then I actually did dismount in front of another chapel that stood near it. My hotel was in the same street; I might have let the horse go to it on its own, but I preferred to lead it there. It was as though I should have felt ashamed to arrive at it on horseback. A hotel ‘boots’ was standing in front of the hotel; he showed me a note of mine that had been found, and laughed at me over it. In the note was written, doubly underlined ‘No food’, and then another remark (indistinct) such as ‘No work’, together with a vague idea that I was in a strange town in which I don’t work at all. It would not be supposed at first sight that this dream originated under the influence, or rather under the compulsion, of a painful stimulus. But for some days before I had been suffering from boils that made every movement a torture; and finally a boil the size of an apple had risen at the base of my scrotum, which caused me the most unbearable pain with every step I took. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 190012 Volket quotes a dream of a young woman who inadvertently managed to get a corner of her coverlet between her teeth and ‘lo, a whimsical god graced the sleeping one with a huge apple strudel into which she was biting with insatiable appetite.’ From my own collection, for instance, I can describe a dream wherein, after a skirmish with an enemy infantry, my back was heavily injured by a bayonet – I wake up and in that very same place I feel a light pressure from the corner of a pillow. A sleeper is dreaming of holding a revolver by the side of his body. He tries to shoot with it. The revolver does not work. Two or three rounds drop out of it to the ground. Behind a wooden fence a pretty girl is observing the dreamer. On waking he finds that he is holding onto his erect penis. Záviš Kalandra, The Reality of Dream, 1947

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 56

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

57

Mouthful of mouse blood – dream 14 December 1971 I see myself peeling pieces of paint under which are petrified spiders. Everything’s falling onto a large heap on the ground creating an unpleasant pile of rubbish. Presently I see a live mouse (of a very strange shape) forming out of that pile. I pick up a sword (?) and cut it into half. Suddenly, as if everything loses its gravity, I feel the blood flowing from my hair – it is quite revolting. To top it all, my mouth is full of blood from that mouse, mixed with small pieces of mouse meat. I am overcome with unbelievable disgust, I run to a wash basin where I spit the blood and wash my mouth with water, but it keeps filling with more blood, it keeps dribbling out, I am quite desperate that there is no end to this horror. As I wake up, I find out that my teeth are biting with all their force into the sheet that is red with blood, then for a long time I feel pain in my mouth. (The dream contains fragments of reality from the previous few days: painting of a dirty cupboard, a previously unknown to me reproduction of Magritte’s painting of a woman eating a bird.) Martin Stejskal I am taking a walk and suddenly, unexpectedly, I find myself in a shady peripheral secluded spot, near the ruins of some old castle. Odd corners are teeming with copulating couples, triples and masturbating men, all as if intertwined with trees and various creeping plants. They inject each other with hypodermic syringes; otherwise they have vacant, dull faces and carry on their activity with a certain apathetic stubbornness. One of the lone men notices me and approaches me with a poised hypodermic. I start to run, they all follow me. In the end they catch up with me, poke me with sticks and prick me with needles so that I can barely breathe with pain. They strip me naked, put me into a drum and laughingly roll me down a steep slope. I can just hear the shouting, panting and groaning of a renewed, wild orgy, then the rattle of the drum, pain and finally a fall from the bed that wakes me up. Alena Nádvorniková Dream of women’s running race – 15 September 1978 The pan-European athletic competition is in progress. The final of the women’s 400 metres race is about to be run. The organizers are desperate, there are not enough competitors. They are running around the sports grounds, searching to find someone willing to run. They don’t care, they’re willing to accept even men. Martin Stejskal and myself let them talk us into it. As we are, in our street clothes, we position ourselves on the blocks, next to the other runners in shorts and singlets. The woman with the starting gun is getting ready to start the race when she is informed that there is a phone call for her in a nearby cabin. She walks away. The competitors on the blocks relax. I urgently want to go to the toilet. I tell Martin that I am going to have a piss and ask him to make sure that the race is not started without me. I walk away behind some wooden wall and start urinating. It’s taking a long time and I am still not finished. I can’t see the starting line and it makes me nervous. I worry that they will start without me. I hear the gun go off and it is clear to me that I missed it, the race is being run without me. At last I finish. I run out from behind the wall and full of rage start abusing the starter, how could she think to start the race without me, that I would certainly have won, how is it that she could go off during her working time to answer the telephone while I couldn’t even go to the toilet. I follow the race as a spectator and am convinced

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 57

6/03/2014 10:04 am

58

Touching and Imagining

that since I am not running, Martin, at least, will certainly win. However, a small tubby girl in a Manchester costume gets to the finishing line first. Martin is finishing among the few last ones. I can’t comprehend that and ask Martin how is it possible that he didn’t win. Martin, completely exhausted explains that it wasn’t possible. I wake up with an urgent need to go to the toilet. Jan Švankmajer Into this category of tactile dreams belongs even the ‘Experimentally aroused dreams on the basis of tactile stimulus’ According to Robert Macnish, Giron de Buzareingues already conducted such experiments. By leaving his knees uncovered, he dreamt that he travelled during night on a mail coach. He remarks that travellers will no doubt be aware how cold one’s knees become in a coach. Another time he left his head uncovered at the back and dreamt that he was taking part in a religious ceremony in the open air. It must be explained that in the country in which he lived it was the custom always to keep the head covered except in circumstances such as these.13 Meier, according to Hennings (Regarding Dreams and Sleepwalkers, Weimar 1784, page 258) on another occasion tightened up his shirt collar and dreamt that he was being hanged. Hoffbauer dreamt in his youth that he fell from a high wall and woke up to observe that the bed had collapsed and he really did fall.14 Dr Gregory relates that having occasion to apply a bottle of hot water to his feet when he went to bed, he dreamt that he was making a journey to the top of Mount Etna, and that he found the heat of the ground almost insufferable. Another person, on having a hot poultice applied to his head, imagined that a party of Indians was scalping him; while a friend of mine who happened to sleep in damp sheets, dreamt that he was dragged through a stream. A paroxysm of gout during sleep has given rise to that dreamer supposing himself to be under the power of the Inquisition, undergoing the torments of the rack.15 Maury relates new observations of dreams that were aroused in him (many other attempts were unsuccessful). 1. Being tickled on the lips and nose with a feather – dreams of terrible torture. 2. Someone puts a mask made of resin on his face, takes it off, at the same time his skin comes off! 3. Being pinched on the neck – dreams that a mustard poultice is being applied, and thinks of a doctor who attended him in childhood. 4. A hot iron is held near his face – he dreams of chauffeurs (bands of robbers in the Vendee who used this kind of torture), who have infiltrated the house and demanded money from the inhabitants by putting their feet into braziers of redhot coals. Then the Duchess d’Abrantes, to whom he is a secretary, appears. 5. A drop of water drips on his forehead. (He is in Italy, perspiring, drinking Orvieto wine.)16 Disregarding that Freud regards the sensory stimuli themselves as immaterial to the dream, he does not deny that such stimuli affect the dream’s function. Dream is a great improviser, reacting to sensory stimuli that occur during sleep by gently and fluidly including them into the scene development (manifest content of the dream) without interrupting the story line. Sensory objects, even without changing the latent content of the dream, distinctly affect its metaphor, thereby co-creating its imaginative shape. Under certain circumstances, as in the

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 58

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

59

instance of Marquis d’Hervey,17 it is possible for the sensory objects to influence even the latent content of the dream, presuming that conscious experiences combined with pleasure come to bear on it, as shown by André Breton in Communicating Vessels: Much happier than Huysman’s hero from the novel À Rebours (Against the Grain), d’Hervey, was, I presume, so privileged socially that he didn’t attempt to escape anything, and, without any emotional harm, went ahead to procure – outside the real world – a number of clear satisfactions that were in the sensory sphere no worse than des Esseinte’s drunkenness, but didn’t cause any depression or reproaches. Sucking an ordinary psychedelic plant root with which, in a normal state, he carefully associated a certain number of pleasant images that all originated in the myth about Pygmalion, he achieved seductive adventures in his dream as the hand of a co-adventurer slipped the root between his lips. When I evaluate this result properly, and without any astonishment, I gladly rate it as the pinnacle of poetical achievements of the last century, right next to those for which Rimbaud is responsible, celebrating the poet’s application of the principle of necessarily arousing a complete and considerable disturbance of one’s senses.18

42. Touch Your Dreams, 1976

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 59

6/03/2014 10:04 am

43. Dream about Mountain Climbers (uncovered tactile object), 1976

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 60

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

61

Touch your dreams The moment we isolate touch from the other senses and throw tactile experiences to the mercy of speech, a precarious situation arises; we realize that words do not suffice to describe our feelings unambiguously. As we search through dictionaries we find very few words expressing tactile sensations. Additionally, most of such words simultaneously also express the visual experience. In practice, all words indicating the shape or structure of objects rely on the dual perception TOUCH – SIGHT. Only when describing quality are there several concepts reserved exclusively for touch: Hard, warm, supple and so on. If we want to express with words a direct bodily experience we are immediately thrown back into the realm of poetic language. From the point of view of scientific positivism, this lack of touch is unforgivable, and as it does not seem possible to jump this identity barrier into the free space of imagination, the preoccupation with touch reverts to the sphere of statistics, concerning itself, in the best circumstances, with the differential ability of skin. It never concerned me – and now when my interest has turned to the consumerist culture’s least deformed sense, even less so – whether the human skin registers the prick of a pair of compasses, arms of which are separated by three millimetres, as two pricks or one. From the standpoint of the experimentation that I follow, I see that what initially appears to be a scarcity, causing difficulties, on the contrary is a guarantee of the authenticity of descriptions of tactile experiences. Experimentation with the tactile object ‘Restorer’ showed that the majority of participants regarded the object as a fictitious happening, in spite of it being an interpretation of a static picture. This narrative activity of the tactile object is caused by technical communication with the object. A hand inside the sleeve is unable to encompass the entire space of the object with one gesture, and so is forced to discover individual parts of it gradually. Sensory impressions, associations and ideas come gradually and make up a sequence of ‘events’ combining into a scene. In the interpretative texts about tactile objects, and in the experiments so far, I have discovered certain similarities with descriptions of dreams: their story line, the visualization of something that we don’t see in reality, the combining of rationally incompatible ideas and the utter reality of the experience (physical reality, as distinct from reading something). When we sleep, dreams develop in our inner vision independently of any real visual perception. In tactile dreams the inner vision’s ‘development’ is mediated by touch. A blow to the neck by a broken iron bed rod motivates a story from the French revolution finishing with guillotining of the dreamer (Maury) or a fall from the bed motivates a scene of sadistic orgies (Alena Nádvorníková). Similarly, with the perception of a tactile object, the immediate tangible object produces associations and analogous images. With such characterizations, the tactile object can become an ideal interpreter of our dreams. Not just a static motif of a dream taken out of context as an inspirational basis of creativity (for example with Jindřich Štyrský), but the entire dream with all the twists of its story. With the experimentation that I am offering here, I tried to allow you to experience your dreams once more, and moreover, to make it possible for you to touch them. Dream about mountain climbers 8 October 1976 Vratislav Effenberger demonstrates, as part of the questionnaire on eroticism, his masturbation experiences when young. We all stand at the base of a sheer sand cliff. From top to bottom the cliff is drilled with pairs of holes. ‘Each pair represents one masturbation’, explains Vratislav Effenberger. On one of the pairs, about one metre above ground, he demonstrates the technique of masturbation. He also shows that wherever the holes are, the other side of the wall is hollow. The holes go right through.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 61

6/03/2014 10:04 am

62

Touching and Imagining

Vratislav Effenberger explains that during masturbation warm milk was injected into one of the holes from the other side. Jan Švankmajer The dream is based on several real events: The erotic moment of the dream is accompanied by an anthology worked on by a group. Vratislav Effenberger plays the main role in the dream, just as he does in the organization of the group. The sand cliffs provide the environment for the dream because several days preceding that, I was shooting a film in Prachov Mountains. The cliffs became an erotic context for several reasons. A member of the film crew declared that one of the cliffs reminded him of female genitalia. During the filming, a group of climbers was scaling an almost perpendicular needle nearby. Observing them, it occurred to me that they looked like Swift’s tiny people climbing up Gulliver’s erect penis. Their silent activity seemed to me to be one of the most stupid sublimations. Small and large depressions are hollowed out of the sandstone, creating bizarre structures on the surface of the stone. Pairs of holes, each signifying a single masturbation in the dream, evidently have their origin in the drawing Eva Švankmajerová did (on the theme of eroticism and automobilism) for the abovementioned anthology. Examining the drawings I discerned a certain similarity in all automobilisms – penises. All of them have two openings in their ‘glans’. These openings are placed below each other as in a vagina. (To my surprise at this anatomical nonsense, I received an answer worthy of an innocent virgin: ‘Isn’t it right?’ Behind that feigned naivety hides a quite obvious provocation originating in the castration complex.) Warm milk squirting into the rock holes during masturbation has two sources: 1)  warm milk fills rubber balloons in some openings (during orgasm sperm substitutes for milk); 2) for a year now, during the night, I am disturbed early in the morning from my sleep to warm up some milk for my son to assuage his hunger. 1976 Interpretation of the object Small rings covered by thread, quite pleasant to touch, transmute the coarse structure of a stone into an object worthy of affection and so invite our fingers to rest on them, not just to rest but to make a circular motion of their circumference without fear of being injured. The lowest ring is threaded on a nylon thread, as if inviting us to a game; this, after the initial overcoming of identifying embarrassment, overtakes our senses so much that we force ourselves to further exploration of the object with difficulty. At any rate, we don’t have to go far. Our fingers stop, face to face with the mountaineer’s cold penis, which, owing to its lifeless slipperiness, is impossible to climb, and which is meanwhile held in check by the bridle of sublimation. For how long? The direction of its glans does not leave us in any doubt, any more than the elasticity of the bridles. An ordinary clothes hanger weighed down with snails’ shells in the form of a dead woman (mother?) secures these prohibitions from childhood. Similarly, the brush handles, worn smooth by hands’ touching, and ending in clumps of bristles hardened with dried lacquer, do not allow any deeper penetration into the heart of delight. In spite of that it signals its future. Even if up to now our descriptive perception has been, and will continue to be, condemned to the infinitely stretched-out darkness of the black sleeve of a postal employee, our real vision is starting to witness a reconstruction of childhood.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 62

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

63

Dream about unwashed dishes The house where I was born had a large, square kitchen. The old building has an architectural peculiarity and novelty, with which my parents endowed our household; it meant that visitors had to enter the house through the kitchen. The kitchen was neither a hallway nor a corridor, it was simply a kitchen entrance. In that entrance I used to wash the dishes. Dishwashing is the most disgusting work I have ever undertaken. It was repugnant to me not only because during that activity my feet were always cold, my scalp was itching and I perspired a little, but chiefly because I was reaching with my hands into smelly, lukewarm water with grease floating on top to reach objects which often inflicted bleeding cuts. My mother had a habit of teasing and humiliating me while I did the washing up by testing my knowledge of multiplication tables. On two occasions I fled, I ran away from home, partly because of that beastly washing up. In my dream about the kitchen, H. F. in her knitted striped dress with a flowing skirt from Denmark, was standing, or rather, lying down. She’d just come in. I kept running away from that repulsive work, I ran to her and reached under her skirt. Each time she said something, I took my hands out of that dirty water and in place of a reply, I did what I wrote above. Eva Švankmajerová Interpretation of the dream The greasy circles from the rinsed plates unwittingly slide over the skin on the hands like the ‘Danish’ skirt. If you insert the hand into the object you must become aware that it becomes the hand of the dreamer, that it becomes a part of someone else’s dream and simultaneously an intermediary between reality and dream. Consequently, even you do ‘what I wrote above’. Not here, but there in the dream, in Eva Švankmajerová’s dream, but the unwashed dishes are yours, even the Danish skirt, because you too have your own unwashed dishes and your own Danish skirt and you carry on this tactile dialogue between them. And the elastic around the elbow is a borderline between dream and reality. Don’t be afraid, immerse your hand into the dream water with pools of grease on the surface and fulfil your wish. Dream object of Emila Medková How do we hold the fingers (of the left hand or right hand or both) before we immerse them into a shapeless material of clay? Is there an aggressive gesture that discharges tension with one brutal touch? Or is there, on the contrary, a repeated, desperate digging of the earth? Or just a light touch with the palm that leaves a barely visible mark of the lines of fate? Does it seem easier now than, say, half a year ago? But is it really so? I am leaving some house (perhaps it is the house on Na Královce street in Vršovice where we used to live). The main door opening onto the street squeaks, I fear that I will wake up everyone in the whole house. Gently I press down the door handle and try to lift the door up a little to minimize the squeaking, but the handle seems to have gone soft, it changes its shape to the shape of my hand and it’s impossible to lift the door up or push it down. The handle moulds itself to my hand and is getting softer. Now it is sticking to my hand and the door, whose inertia never stopped it from opening, squeaks terribly. I run out on to the street, try to wipe my hands that are clammy from

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 63

6/03/2014 10:04 am

44. Dream about Unwashed Dishes (uncovered tactile object), 1976

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 64

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

65

the door handle on my trousers, but it doesn’t seem to work. They keep being sticky. I run towards Grébovka. I run past the vineyard. Some women there are digging around the vine roots. I am sitting in the kitchen at Stankov, Emila walks in through the door, there is a clean white handkerchief stuck to her face. The handkerchief is damp and so pressed to her face that it copies the shape of her face (it reminds me of the head of a statue of the memorial to J. Zeyer in Petřín). Emila: ‘Wipe your hands! You can’t eat with hands like that.’ I get up and with great anxiety reach with my clammy hands for the handkerchief on Emila’s face. (I wake up in horror.) 21 February 1986, morning Is it really the same in a tactile dream as in an experiment with tactile objects, where touch, in an effort to identify unknown tactile object, paradoxically leaves the safe ground of identity and begins to express it imaginatively? Why is it that in an effort to identify an object, or its parts, touch descends (if facing an object or structure that is hard to identify) into an interpretative delirium, where there is precisely the feeling of non-ambiguity in using a sequence of freely ordered associations and analogies to try and grasp the object; in a dream the tactile object ‘identifies’ quite clearly, even though it is evidently about unusual objects (Maury’s bed rod) and the ‘identification’ of the object in the dream is usually quite ‘fantastical’, going beyond the sensory experiences of the dreamer (Maury’s guillotine, Alena Nádvorníková’s capture in a keg). How is one to understand the difference between the dependence and helplessness of touch when facing unfamiliar objects while fully awake, and its sovereignty in judging the exciting sensory objects while dreaming? Freud maintains that the dream sorts out disturbing sensory impulses during sleeping, in a similar way to the remnants of reality from the previous day, and fashions that material into various combinations thereby creating the manifest dream content. Of course the remnants of reality from the previous day, or days, offer a relatively large number of variants and possible combinations, as this material comprises impulses that we experienced in the last twenty-four or fortyeight, sometimes even more, hours. A tactile sensation, or some other sensory impulse which appears to be disturbing, is usually very short or without possible variants, onedirectional, and for that reason it is certainly difficult for the dream to incorporate it convincingly into the context of an already happening dream – moreover the impulses are sometimes quite rapid (Maury’s bed rod, fall from the bed) so the inclusion into the already happening dream is not simple. It is possible that Kalandra and before him a number of others (A. Krauss, R. A. Scherner, L. Strumpell, A. Maury) were correct when stating that it is only this tactile (sensory) subject that is the impulse for the dream, the centre and the axis of it, denying the dream its psychological dimension. Even so, the sovereignty with which the dream manages such unusual situations is perplexing. Is it somehow related to the disposition of the dreamer to imaginative thinking, or is it merely a matter of circumstances, of accident? Maury quotes the dream about the guillotine as proof that a dream takes place in a very short time frame, that it must develop as some parallel perception of a clump of notions which become sorted out into a narrative sequence as the dream develops. He describes the guillotine dream as a long, very complex one in which everything logically leads to the guillotining of the dreamer. However, the dream, or the psychic phenomenon that brought it about, could not assume that at the conclusion of it a bed rod will fall down and end it. Would Maury dream that he was being guillotined even without that distinctive tactile object?

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 65

6/03/2014 10:04 am

45. Dream Object of Emila Medková, 1986

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 66

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

67

It is interesting that in a dream motivated by a tactile object, that object, although imaginatively changed, is again experienced in a tactile way. Between the object and its imaginative adaptation there is always some tactile relationship, the tactile feeling remains, the dream never completely transforms it into any other sensory plane. Additionally, during the metamorphosis of the original subject, in most cases an exaggeration of that subject takes place. What causes such an exaggeration? It will be difficult to find satisfactory answers to these questions. Perhaps we can get some inkling through experimental dreams (dreams influenced by artificial tactile or sensory subjects). During a dream, touch escapes the utilitarian functions and is freed not only from its slavery to other senses but above all from the supervision of the super-ego, it reverts to its infantile experiences and tactile fantasies, the pre-utilitarian phase of its development: 1) The pre-experiences of tactile contact with the mother’s body (especially oral experiences) when the mother’s body must have seemed something huge, unbounded, at the same time bringing bliss, but also fear and anxiety (of being trapped by flesh). 2) Tactile sado-anal experiences and the first contacts with objects, and an attempt to subjugate them. But also, there is the infant’s first exaggeration of these objects and tactile fantasies (childhood fantasies that the toys harm them). 3) Masturbation experiences accompanied by erotic phantasies and also exaggerations (even though there is no metamorphosis to another plane). In this phase of erotic life the first realization of sexual symbolism (hand – vagina) occurs. 4) It seems that even among dreamers the ‘artists’ are better equipped than others for imaginative experiencing, and that this ‘talent’ of theirs, expressing itself in a dream, need not be evident in a waking state. The answers to the questionnaire on squeamishness showed that a strong emotive reaction exists in some cases even with just a notion of touching; experimentation with tactile objects confirms that to a large degree this happens in reverse as well. With a mere sighting of certain structures or animals an emotional effect occurs, as if we were touching the object (animal; see also reflexive hallucinations), sometimes connected with an urge to touch (Martin Stejskal), but also fear and disgust, at the same intensity, as if we were already touching. Here, sight can be of assistance in tactile art; sight arouses tactile imagination and resulting emotions. With tactile objects it is the reverse, a tactile object arouses a visual image and resulting emotions. In the first instance, the tactile perception is only latent (notional), in the second, the visual perception, brought about by a tactile object, happens in front of our inner vision, as a visual notion. There exists, however, one other tactile imagination, of which we are aware from our tactile dreams, where the sensory, tactile object in the dream changes into another object, also tactile. Here it is a pure, tactile metamorphosis, usually exaggerated (as pointed out by Kalandra). No matter that the tactile subject is visualized; the fact remains that the metamorphosis of the object takes place in the tactile imagination, as a real experience. 1981

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 67

6/03/2014 10:04 am

68

Touching and Imagining

Synaesthesia Vowels A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels One day I will tell of your latent birth: A, black hairy corset of shining flies Which buzz around a cruel stench, Gulf of darkness; E, whiteness of vapours and tents, Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, quivering of flowers; I, purples, spit blood, laughter of beautiful lips In anger of penitent drunkenness; U, cycles, divine vibrations of green seas, Peace of pastures scattered with animals, peace of the wrinkles Which alchemy prints on the heavy studious brows; O, supreme Clarion full of strange stridor, Silences crossed by words and angels: – O, the Omega, violet beam from His Eyes! Arthur Rimbaud, 188319 Evolution of the whole culture based on a healthy artistic instinct was interrupted by naturalism, technology and civilization that have come to the world’s fore. A healthy instinct for the times gone by can nowadays be replaced only with a systematic education towards recognition of what the individual senses have in common. Research into the inner relationship of individual senses will therefore become a logical necessity for further progress. A. Hošek, Relationship of Colours and Tones, 192620 In 1840, Dr Augonová studied a girl (14-year-old G. L.) who became dyspeptic and anorexic as a result of a fit of remorse. In a somnambular state she could identify coins laid onto the back of her neck and later even her sight and hearing transferred to her stomach regions, so that with a blindfold she could read a book from a distance of several steps. It was one of the interesting examples of a transposition of senses. In another case the patient, (14-year-old C. S.), who lost her eyesight (No. 7 on Jägrov’s scale) was able to see with the tip of her nose and the left ear lobe, the sense of smell shifted to her chin, later to the soles of her feet. We have to admit the possibility that in abnormal circumstances the sensitivity of skin and nerve centres can be so heightened that a new universal surface sense arises that receives the finest differentiation in wave frequency oscillations upon which known kinds of energy depend. Dr V. Forster, Occult Phenomena and Their Psychological Explanation, 192321 Nations have quite often achieved a spiritual harmony at the smallest of costs. How much damaging exhaustion, how much unnecessary irritation could we save ourselves if we were willing to accept realistic conditions of our human experience

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 68

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

69

and the fact that it is not in our power to free ourselves completely from its scope and rhythm. Space has its specific quality, just as sounds and smells have colours, and feelings have a certain weight. This searching for correspondence is not a poetic play or mysticism (as someone dared to write about Rimbaud’s sonnet about vowels: a classical case for today’s linguist who does not know the causal basis of the colours of individual phonemes – which changes for each individual – but only the relationships which connect colours and phonemes, allowing for only a limited number of possibilities). A completely new territory opens up for a scientist where research can achieve rich discoveries. Like artists, fish differentiate light or dark smells and bees perceive differences in light intensity as differences in weight – dark shade feels heavy for them and light shade is light in weight. And so the work of a painter, poet or musician, just as the myths and symbols of a primitive man, should appear to us as being, if not a higher form of recognition, at least the fundamental form which is individual and universal. In relation to this knowledge scientific thinking represents only a sharp edge: it is penetrating because it is sharpened on the stone of facts but at the cost of losing its tactile fullness; its effectiveness lies in its ability to cut sufficiently deep so that the substance of the tool is subordinated to the human mind. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Sad Tropics, 195522 . . . the aim is the achievement of mechanism of passions or series of groups, a tendency to harmonize the five sensory areas (1. taste, 2. touch, 3. vision, 4. hearing, 5. smell) with four affective areas (6. friendship, 7. ambition, 8. love, 9. family instinct). This harmony is possible to achieve through three little known and discredited passions that I refer to as: 10. cabalist (trickery), 11. papillon (sensory and spiritual delight), and 12. composite (mania for diversity). Charles Fourier, The New Industrial World, 182923

46. Lipstick, 2009

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 69

6/03/2014 10:04 am

70

Touching and Imagining

Perversion for five senses, May 1978 (Synaesthetic game of analogy) It would seem that in the course of analysing chromatic hearing, we arrive at a deep universal law, valid for various other phenomena and forms of human thinking. Psychological experiments have shown that even such sensations as smell, taste, touch as well as bodily well-being and pain, can be translated into optical images; that one can award colours to numbers, the days of the week, vowels (Rimbaud), and other systems. It has in fact been demonstrated that oneiric (dream-like) visual images can be aroused by aural or tactile sensations that yet again point to a certain correspondence, to a certain functional supplementing of sensory equivalences. Karel Teige, ‘Poetry for the Five Senses or the Second Manifesto of Poetism’24

1. HOMOSEXUALITY Colour: Light ochre. Tactile analogy: Cut onion into two halves and holding the pieces in the hands rub on bare chest with a circular motion. At the same time stand barefooted on very rough sand paper and gently move the toes of both feet. Smell: Hot asphalt. Taste: Freshly burned butter. Sound: Amplified sound of hair being combed. 2. LESBIANISM Colour: White. Tactile analogy: Wrap naked body in warm polythene and roll down grassy meadow. Smell: Dried camomile. Taste: Salt. Sound: Steam escaping from pressure cooker. 3. SADOMASOCHISM Colour: Black orange. Tactile analogy: Gently cut into finger balls of both hands so that they bleed lightly, then caress oneself over the whole body. Smell: Wet dog. Taste: Simmering jasmine tea. Sound: Birdseed ground under foot. 4. PAEDOPHILIA Colour: Azure blue. Tactile analogy: Hold a still warm, plucked chicken under each armpit and kneel onto over-ripe apples. Smell: Doors, freshly painted with oil paint.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 70

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

71

Taste: Flour. Sound: Amplified sound of spilling beads. 5. VOYEURISM Colour: Dark grey. Tactile analogy: Immerse hands into cooling glue, after a while slowly pull them out. Smell: Old mouldy paper. Taste: Antacid. Sound: Absolute stillness. 6. FETISHISM Colour: Pink. Tactile analogy: In an overheated room, sit naked on an eiderdown and roll a rolling pin covered with fine fur firstly up and down the back (from buttocks to as high as one can reach), then from top of the head down to the end of the toes. Smell: Freshly plucked feathers. Taste: The kind felt when pressing tongue to the metal of a street lamp in winter (at minus five degrees Centigrade). Sound: Undoing seams on clothing. 7. BESTIALITY Colour: Lemon yellow. Tactile analogy: Very lightly tickling inside the ears with feathers from a wild duck. Smell: Steamed man’s hat. Taste: One’s own blood. Sound: Loretta bells. 8. GERONTOPHILIA Colour: Periwinkle green. Tactile analogy: Sitting naked astride a branch of an old pear tree (branch must be at least twenty five centimetres in diameter) and digging fingernails into palms of hands in a regular rhythm (about five minutes). Smell: Crushed cardamom. Taste: Infusion of porridge oats. Sound: Stick being run past picket fence. 9. NECROPHILIA Colour: Purple. Tactile analogy: Lying down bare-backed on scattered, dried peas, weigh down the shin bones with a block of ice and put palms of hands, previously warmed in a fur muff, on the forehead. Smell: Sweaty pillow. Taste: Saccharine. Sound: Kicking against the door.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 71

6/03/2014 10:04 am

72

Touching and Imagining

47. Imagery-Evoking Spaces – Connections (model) 1978

Connections Sound of a starting gun. They thrust forward. Eyes staring. With a pouch on each hip, and a number on the back. In the left pouch the olfactory organ of Des Esseintes, in the right pouch the cookbook of Salvador Dalí. At the goal a tactile chair is waiting for them, which, like a central telepathic communication connects the convoluted brains of these racing thought fanatics with an unbroken chain of short-connected erections. Who will be first? Who will be first to taste the delight of ipsatio totalis? The entry controls, in the form of elbow sleeves, can, at any time during the race, check the sensations (in the central nervous system as well as in the crotch) of the participants in the children’s game of ‘Sit Down’. I saw without looking, I smelled without smelling, I heard without listening, I tasted, without putting anything into my mouth, I felt, without touching anything; that is the law of synaesthesia. Text for the exhibition of the collective project of the Surrealist Group in Czechoslovakia, 1978

48. Firmly Hold The Mouse, 2009

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 72

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

73

Morphology of fear, 1980 SIGHT Fear, for me, does not have any colour, at least not in the visible part of the spectrum. The strongest feelings of fear I experienced were always situated in darkness that is impenetrable to me, darkness that does not make me disappear, on the contrary makes me into a visible and obvious target. This helplessness in the dark, apprehension of not being able to hide, became even stronger when I found out about the existence of infrared binoculars. The most fearsome is the darkness that I must step into. Darkness, for me, is space that is never empty; on the contrary it is, in its way, very dense, danger threatens with every step. It is full of precipices to fall into, ferocious beasts ready to attack me, devils, demons and evil persons about to strangle me. The building where I spent my childhood was an apartment block in Vršovice. It was three-storied, with a staircase in the middle and pockets of dark corridors on every level. We lived on the third floor at the end of one such dark corridor. Our door was at the end of the corridor. From the staircase, the door disappeared in the darkness. To get through that corridor to our door, I always moved sideways with my back pressed against the wall. I could not rid myself of the idea that at the door to our apartment stood a soldier with a pointed bayonet which I would most certainly impale myself on if I walked straight up through the middle of the corridor. The soldier wore a red uniform. HEARING Sound of a warning siren. My mother gave this fear to me. I didn’t fear the sound of the siren because of what might happen (during any of the air raids nearby nothing terrible ever happened, anyway 99 per cent of alarms were false) but because my mother panicked through every alarm with fear and terror, which also affected me. When the siren sounded I wasn’t afraid of the aircraft (rather than being bearers of the destructive bombs they brought with them, to me they were the deliverers of shiny silver streamers which we all searched for afterwards) but I feared for my mother, whom I loved; I was concerned that she would again be experiencing her unbearable fear and I would be unable to help her. Fear of another kind was a state of absolute silence, in the forest or at night when at home, alone. I am afraid to move, so as not to interrupt it, not to bring attention to myself, or not to miss some other sound that might be a precursor of some danger. SMELL I fear being in the cellar. A cellar, for me, is like a cemetery. And the door to the cellar is a gateway between the world of the living and the hereafter. Every time I descended there for coal or for potatoes, I identified with Orpheus. The worst part of it was to overcome the first whiff of mustiness that rushed at me from the open cellar door. I always felt it with my whole body. In vain, I tried to breathe shallowly and limit my breathing to a minimum. The stench of an opened grave. For my first film, I needed some large black beetles. One of my friends took me to his home, to the cellar, where large cockroaches reputedly lived. In spite of the fact that he lived in a relatively new block (one of the tiled places in Letná, a suburb of Prague), where the cellars don’t look like the ones from my childhood, where instead of sparse wooden partitions dividing individual tenants’ sections there are almost liveable rooms with lacquered doors, where the narrow passageways with blinking, naked globes are replaced with normal well-lit corridors, in spite of that I was overcome with fear, so intimately remembered from

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 73

6/03/2014 10:04 am

74

Touching and Imagining

my childhood, a sensation motivated by that familiar odour of a freshly opened grave, which after a while is created even in these modern buildings, perhaps to preserve the magical continuum of fear. TASTE Fear tastes of boiled onions. Even as a child, I avoided invitations for lunches or dinners; when I couldn’t avoid one, I was full of anxiety that I would be served some boiled onions on my plate. For that reason, whenever visiting, to the great annoyance of my parents, I insisted that I was not hungry and refused to have anything to eat (including sweets, just to be on the safe side). Only once did my father try to ‘teach’ me to eat boiled onions, but the experiment ended with dreadful retching, vomiting, gagging and fever, such that mother feared I would die. After that, they never again forced me to eat boiled onions, though it never ceased to annoy them. TOUCH Firstly pain. A scalpel, cutting into my body. Real, physical pain I basically did not experience till my adult life. From childhood, I recall fear of being kissed by older people, especially men. Birthdays and name days were happy occasions for me only after my parents’ kisses were over (and eventually uncles’ and aunts’), till then I was nervous, taciturn and full of apprehension about whether I would manage to live through it, without giving away the fear and repulsion it aroused in me. If I had to write a description of fear it would be something like this: They tie me down with live snakes to a dirty bunk stained with old men’s semen and alternately pour boiled onions and cold vomit over me, tap cigarette ash into my mouth while slowly cutting up my body. Swarms of flies and bees are crawling in my open wounds, toads and mice are drinking my blood while simultaneously relieving themselves into the festering cuts. During the whole thing, all the relatives from mother’s and father’s side keep kissing me.

49. Not Dead – Not Alive, 1993

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 74

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

75

50. An Unforgettable Meeting (tactile object for two hands), 1976

An unforgettable meeting (Tactile Object for Two Hands) This object came into being as a free play of tactile images. It is not a tactile interpretation of a visual perception or an analogical expression of a picture. On the contrary, the pictorial analogy was found to match the completed object. The interpretation is the result of perplexing relationships. Eroticism of a kitchen range, with the clitoris for hanging up a tea towel. Mussels, age-old symbol of the vagina, used for lobster baking, with the bristles of a boot-polishing brush. A religious view of the holy penis of dreams, stuck between two coconut breasts, while the reality is a small rubber penis for watering pansies. Coarse, sandpaper hand anticipating unforgettable, limp handshake, draining the inevitable erection with strange tubes, all connected with rinsing tubes against unwanted conception. She will really have to control her bladder when excitedly telling the neighbours about her meeting with the president.

51. An Unforgettable Meeting, 1976

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages.indd 75

52. President Husák and Women (newspaper photograph, Rudé Právo, 1976)

3/03/2014 12:06 pm

76

Touching and Imagining

An imaginary portrait of Mikuláš Medek (First step) I have never met Mikuláš Medek in person. In the days when it was possible for me to do so, ‘visiting Medek’s’ or to ‘going to Medek’s’ had already become too fashionable among the Prague snobs for me to want to. I only regret that I did not meet him earlier, if for no other reason than the opportunity to observe the creation of a myth . . .  Lacking personal experience, when constructing an imaginary portrait of him, I had only two things to work with: the myth and Medek’s paintings. Myth is very unreliable (like any other product of collective hysteria) and creative output, without the personal commentary or interpretation of the author, is merely a collection of artefacts the perception of which tells us more about ourselves than about its creator. So what have we got at our disposal? 1. Myth. 2. Paintings. 3. Medek’s very few interpretations of his paintings. 4. Testimonies of his friends. As the ‘most objective’ basis (the first step) for an imaginary portrait of Mikuláš Medek I decided to firstly analyse his work in terms of his appeal to our senses (not our emotions). Notes for the future synaesthetic portrait of Mikuláš Medek Colour The most used colours: 1. Red 2. Blue 3. Yellow (bright gold-yellow) Many of his paintings are basically monochromatic: Red Venus, Celebration, 21,870cm² red Blue Venus, Action I – egg, 21,000cm² blue micro-illusions Black Gambit Almost absolute absence of green Red is the colour of Mars, the ruler of the scorpion (Mikuláš Medek was born on 3 November. Ascertain where the ascendant lies and the position of the moon) Prerequisite: Ascendant: In the Scales or in the Bull, eventually in the Sagittarius or Pisces Moon: In the Lion or in the Twins, eventually in the Virgin Esoteric symbolism of colours: Red: Love, shyness, joy, martyrdom, health, strength, courage (produces warmth, encourages aggression) Blue: Loyalty, moderation, asceticism, grief, morality, illusion, youthfulness, cleanliness (promotes meditation, is of an electrical nature) Yellow: Envy, falsehood, betrayal, ambition, miserliness (calms the nerves, favours inspiration) Green: Hope The green colour appears in Medek’s work exclusively in borderline paintings, creating transitions between individual creative periods.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 76

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

77

53. Tactile Portrait of Mikuláš Medek (casket for monograph), 1979

Sounds No music is to be heard, only live sounds, shouting and, above all, silence. Names of Paintings: Cry, Blue Cry, Golden Cry, Rustling and Silence, Noise of Silence. Silence, however, is expressed by other paintings that do not have it in the title: Head that Sleeps the Imperial Sleep, Sleeper, Swallower of Fetters, and others. Likewise, shouting is present in some paintings: Very Heavy Sleep, Grief of the Fourth Inquisitor, Feast I, Spring and others.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 77

6/03/2014 10:04 am

78

Touching and Imagining

Rustlings: Egg (breakfast) – crackling of frying Chicken-eating I – sound of tearing at a chicken with teeth Emila and Flies – buzzing of flies Action I (egg) – sound of cracking egg shell and squelch of an egg breaking Crackling of dry thistles Tactile values Physical pain, caused mainly by: stabbing, cutting, piercing, chopping. Tools: Forks, knives, arrows, hatchets, fishhooks, glass fragments, thorns, tightening ropes, insects. In the sixties, the canvas itself had become a masochistic object to be tortured, scratched, torn. In the fifties, it was a case of the author picturing the sadomasochistic act, not taking part in the process, and being only a mixture of arranger and spectator; later, in the sixties he becomes an intermediary of the creative process, directly, as an active participant. The act of torture is between the painter and his tools (the palette knife, sharp point of the brush, knife, fingernails) as a sadistic component of the creative process, and the ‘tortured painting’ becomes the masochistic victim. Medek does not illustrate anymore, but participates – thereby the process becomes tactile. Touch becomes more important than the potential visualization of the inner model, because it provides more delight (Suffering of the Red 16,000cm²). In the last period of Medek’s work a new compromise is achieved, a compromise between tactile and visual components (inner model – Holy Naked in Thorns, Seven Thorns in the Lip). Taste At first glance it seems that Medek is one of a few painters who was trying to suggest to the viewer a number of taste sensations with his paintings, especially during his ‘existential’ period. The paintings’ titles already seem to give away this ‘intention’: Egg (breakfast) Feast I and II Chicken-eating Action I – Egg Big Feast World of Onion But what quality of taste is it about? It is about taste without ‘taste’ or even arousal of non-taste (disgust), for instance Egg (breakfast) and Emila And Flies. Both Feasts are, above all, an act of aggression Chicken-eating (even here the physical aggression dominates the ‘taste’, it is more about the sound of tearing flesh with teeth than the taste element). Likewise, with Big Feast. In the paintings from the 1960s this ‘taste element’ disappears completely, and is replaced by direct tactile feeling. Smell One can smell the smoke and burned flesh. 1981

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 78

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

79

If we start to concern ourselves with analogies between tactile and visual perception we cannot avoid the problems of synaesthesia. There are no definite ideas about the origin of synaesthesia but there is a prevailing opinion that it is ‘a condition caused by long forgotten associations that are constantly recalled with a certain stimulus, with such an intensive clarity that the sensory notion becomes visual or aural’ (V. Vondráček). Many psychologists regard synaesthesia as being a remnant of evolutionary development, before the senses were completely separated and isolated with no overlap from one to another. The most frequent cases of synaesthesia have been observed between Vision and Hearing. Less has been written about synaesthesia between Vision and Smell and Vision and Taste. Galton’s experimental subjects also maintained that, like J. A. Rimbaud, vowels and numbers aroused sensations of colours. For comparison: Galton’s experiments: A – white E – red I – yellow

J. A. Rimbaud’s: A – black E – white I – purple

Algelander (1927) examined synaesthesia experimentally and concluded that in fact all perceptions have a certain synaesthetic component. Teige, in his ‘Second Manifesto of Poetism’, mentions the relationship between colours and tactile sensations but does not refer to any concrete source of information: ‘Psychological experiments demonstrated that even the sensations of smell, taste, touch, well being and pain can be transposed to visual images.’ Even though I don’t assume that synaesthesia between Touch and Vision would be any more unusual than, for example, between Smell and Vision, the situation is somewhat more complicated. Quite a special relationship exists between Touch and Vision that is not found among the other senses, at least not in the same measure. In the course of the working process, Touch has become significantly dependent on Vision. It established a kind of perceptual unity that could be regarded as a false synaesthesia. False, because the real synaesthesia, as we understand it for example from double perception Vision–Hearing, is based on an analogical bond between visual and aural perceptions, while the ‘false’ one is a mere confirmation caused by distrust of the differentiation capacity of Touch. It seems that this double identification emerged because it speeded up orientation in the working process. Teige even states that: ‘Vision, in its movement, contains the function of two senses: Vision and Touch, perception of time and space’ (‘Second Manifesto of Poetism’). In this symbiosis Vision usurped the leadership and Touch became the sense for doing the ‘dirty work’. All ‘higher’ experiences were denied to it and Touch had to be satisfied with the role assigned to it in eroticism. Between Touch and Vision there is no equal relationship. Vision does rule over the other senses (psycho-technical tests show up to ten times the number of visual types among the human characters compared with others, for instance acoustical) but nowhere is this superiority so marked as in the connection with Touch. And yet ‘Touch is, after all, the primary sense, all other senses have evolved at different stages from it over a long time.’ (Ladislav Novák, Tactile Poems: introductory notes [see next chapter]). However, if there does exist one aspect of human perception where Touch still has a position dominant over all other senses, it is in the field of eroticism, though even here we witness formalization of this sensibility and an ossification into an unimaginative stereotype.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 79

6/03/2014 10:04 am

80

Touching and Imagining

It is in eroticism that the sensibility of Touch is capable of blossoming into an utmost intensity of which no other sense is capable. This specific relation of Touch and Vision does not prevent us from differentiating colours into warm (red, brown, black, orange, etc.) and cold (green, blue, lemon-yellow, purple, etc.), proving that there exists a synaesthetic connection between physical sensations and vision which is, in its way, more objective than, for instance, the connection between colour and tone, where subjective variations in sensory analogies are considerable. Correspondingly, we differentiate materials into warm and cold even though the actual measurable temperature does not play any role in such description. We are talking about feelings of warmth or cold which various materials and their structures arouse in us. For instance: wood, leather, velvet all feel warm. Glass, metal, synthetic materials arouse a feeling of cold. Shapes of objects can also cause feelings of warmth or cold. Objects with round edges, balls, cylinders create feelings of warmth and those with sharp edges or objects with sharp points feel cold. It also follows that tactile objects made from ‘warm materials’ should arouse warm colours and vice versa, ‘cold materials’ evoke a scale of cold colours. Of course it doesn’t always have to be so; in the case of exceptions, when we follow through the origin of such ‘untypical’ analogies, we will find that deep down there is some conscious, permanent or temporary conditional association. Recent experimentation proved reliably that the primary endeavour of Touch is to deal with the tactile object firstly on the level of identification, then with objects hard to comprehend, by comparison. I don’t think the fact that the submitted objects were comprised mainly of, more or less identifiable (real), objects or their fragments, played a large role in this experience. I am convinced that we would not arrive at too different a conclusion with the objects whose materials (structures) are hard to identify. In the first phase of perception of the object, we will attempt to identify what we are actually touching, although we will probably come up against verbal problems. This is the result of the utilitarian traditions of Touch that can be difficult to confront. One of the ways of getting around this problem is not to hide the tactile objects but to leave their identification to Vision, and not to connect tactile sensations with inner visualization. This was obviously the way chosen by Marinetti in his experiments. In this case, Vision, retains the supremacy of the experience and inevitably becomes the intermediary of tactile perceptions, thereby delegating to Touch a minimal independence in the creation of associations and analogies; in short, vision squeezes Touch out of the imaginative process. Another way is to directly involve this identification phase in the strategy of perceiving the object. The third, and most circuitous way is the cultivation of Touch. The main prerequisite for success of such cultivation is the necessity of freeing Touch from its dependence on Vision. As tactile sensation was given a largely utilitarian function throughout time, Touch was forced into the role of being a dependent sense, one might say a complicated sense. The fact remains that in some instances, the discriminating capacity of Touch is superior to Vision. In spite of that, the superiority of Touch’s ‘responsibility’ over Vision is the greatest barrier to freeing the kind of perception that is essential to tactile art. It seems that Marinetti was also aware of this, since he recommended a complicated procedure for preparing fingers for the perception of tactile tablets. His instructions remind me of the preparations of novices for some magic ritual and in that I see the main purpose of this, at first glance, absurd preparation, allegedly for the purpose of heightening the sensibility of Touch; inwardly it frees one of utilitarian habits to be able to approach the tactile concepts with an awareness of totally different functions of Touch.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 80

6/03/2014 10:04 am

sources of tactile imagination

81

Perhaps it is first necessary to take into consideration these and similar tricks, which liberate Touch from identification conventions and clichés. The concentration that the perceiver directs to identification obscures the more substantial aspects of perception. A very open attitude is necessary to ‘experience’ a tactile object, to allow associations and analogies to resonate. A strenuous, rational concentration blots out the primary impressions and imagination becomes a matter of combination and speculation with identified objects or structures, albeit on the level of an inner model. It is, however, important to stress that this identification phase of perception has its special characteristics. As we touch even the most banal but invisible object, and visualize it with our inner Vision, it takes on a fantastic form which we instantly invest not only with elements common to all similar objects (if it wasn’t so, we wouldn’t be able to identify the object), but also a whole number of subjective associations, permanently or temporarily dependent. For instance, the same shoe will have a different effect on every perceiver that touches it and in a much larger measure than if it was pictured. This phenomenon was on my mind when I spoke of connecting this identification phase directly into the strategy of perceiving a tactile object. Every object, once hidden, instantly becomes only an idea to which the hand of the perceiver gives a concrete shape, content and colour. Every tactile perceiver endows the outlined object with his own characteristics, which will be different to the characteristics of another perceiver of the same object; the only common aspect will be the imaging of these characteristics. This does presume, however, a consistent hiding of the tactile object from Vision. It may not be the purest form of tactile sensations, but given the present non-cultivated sensibility of Touch, it is one of the most feasible possibilities for making tactile art now, when Vision and Touch are frozen in a traditional utilitarian symbiotic for most people. 1978

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 81

6/03/2014 10:04 am

5 SHORT ANTHOLOGY OF TACTILE ART

Touch has undergone a most remarkable modification. Its impressions were tardily received, but more tenaciously retained, and resulting always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure of your gentle fingers upon my eyelids, at first only recognized through vision, long after their removal filled my whole being with an immeasurable sensual delight. Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Colloquy of Monos and Una’, 18411 The point of my experimentation, as must be obvious, is to find out if touch is capable of penetrating (as an independent sense) the realm of art, and to what degree is it able to influence and enrich it. If, up to now, my experimentation brings a positive response to these questions, then this stance of touch is unlikely to escape the attention of other creators. At a certain stage of experimentation, it behoved me to glance at the prophets, predecessors and contemporary proponents of tactile art. This short anthology attempts a critical evaluation of the role of touch in the current history of tactile art. Since, up to now, no one has addressed this issue, and previous material is comprised of inaccessible work, or of trivia struggling on the periphery of creativity, or of projects abandoned too soon, or of work that is part and parcel of work by less known or unknown authors, it was difficult to collect this material together and I can’t make any claim to having included it all. I intentionally didn’t include works created by artists for blind people although I am aware of their existence. I didn’t include them for a simple reason: they are in direct contradiction to the thrust of my experimentation. My tactile experimentation is aimed at the Touch–Vision relationship (even though it is largely concerned with inner vision). That is a factor one can’t reckon with in the art for the blind (at least not with those who were born blind). My tactile experimentation is paradoxically aimed at the healing of Vision and, in its final analysis, at analogical connections between individual senses, thus striving towards synaesthetic poetry. And Vision simply cannot be excluded from this process. Perhaps there also exists something like an essential, purely tactile ‘imagination’; at least, experimentation with tactile dreams seemed to point that way. With tactile dreams (and even dreams brought about by all the sensory impulses) the primary stimuli, which, as we know from Freud, moulds the dream to its manifest content, is usually exaggerated, as was also brought to our attention by Záviš Kalandra

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 82

6/03/2014 10:04 am

short anthology of tactile art

83

54. Valie Export: Tap and Touch Cinema, Oberhausen, 1968

in The Reality of Dream. Nonetheless, even in this exaggerated metamorphosis it is not possible, I think, to do without the experience of Vision. I hope that in time this anthology will become more complete, with further work and authors. Tattooing in primitive societies without doubt belongs to the purest ancient forms of tactile art. It doesn’t serve merely as decoration or as some indication of belonging to a specific tribe; its significance is above all magical. The tattooed person is thereby dedicated to a certain god or ritual, and at the same time is protected against illness, pain and evil spirits. The pain associated with being tattooed is metamorphosed via imagination into a strong psychic experience, in a kind of re-birth on a higher level. It has a reincarnating significance. There can be no doubt about a powerful imaginative rush during the metamorphosis of a painful experience. It is understandable that tattooing is a tactile art in the full sense only for the one being tattooed. The tattooing artist doesn’t use an object for his work, but a subject who suffers pure tactile sensations on his body. The effect of the completed work, the tattooed body, on the viewer is overwhelmingly one of visual emotion. The tactile emotion can only be felt through the medium of vision, although for a fellow tribesman it can evoke a certain physical empathy associated with his own experience of tattooing – the rite of passage. Jan Van Eyck belongs to the first group of painters who, beside visual perception, also invested their paintings with other senses, in particular touch. In picturing objects, humans, animals and nature he generally puts emphasis on faithful representation not only of shapes but also of structures and materials. Thus, the previously idealized Gothic reality, which was solely the domain of vision, takes on further dimensions, thanks to him, above all one of tactile sensibility, even though this is still through the intermediary of sight.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 83

6/03/2014 10:04 am

84

Touching and Imagining

55. Ritual Scarification, Congo

‘Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t he beautiful,’ said Eliante enthusiastically. ‘Oh! It is unique! You can’t imagine anything more charming. One can believe that when struck by light, there’s spirit in it; that a heart is burning in this alabaster urn! You talked to me of pleasure? That’s something altogether different! It is love secreted in some unknown matter, the insanity of mute delight. It never says

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 84

6/03/2014 10:04 am

short anthology of tactile art

85

anything. It is very old, it stayed young for many centuries because it never screamed its secrets to anyone.’ (She wrapped her arms around the amphora.) ‘Have a good look and try to see it for a moment . . . through my eyes! Come and touch it. I give you permission . . . Go gently, too heavy a touch will tarnish it.’ (She grabbed the young man’s hand and carefully ran it over the unblemished whiteness of the vase, over its virginal hips.) ‘Tell me, do you feel the hopeless sweetness of the distinctly marked out form? It will remain so, because it has reached perfection. It will not grow or diminish, it is immutable in its beauty. Oh! I truly want you to spend at least five minutes in ecstasy over this perfect shape and immortal object. You’re not laughing any more? It makes you afraid, it makes you ashamed! I knew that you were intelligent . . . because pleasure turns you pale with delight. This magical vase is pale with delight over itself!’ (Her eyelids trembled and Leon Reille thought that he was hearing the sound of wings.) ‘It has no history. I obtained it through the usual intermediaries, I almost wanted to say: slave traders! They sold it to me in Tunis, as though they were selling a slave . . .’ Eliante, now standing erect above the neck of the amphora, stretched herself like a bow from her neck to her heels. She wasn’t offering herself to a man; she was surrendering to the alabaster vase, an unfeeling shape of clay. Without making any indecent move, her arms chastely crossed over the body of her slender form, not a maiden, nor a boy, she clenched her fingers, remaining still, then the man saw her closed eyelids opening, her lips parting and he thought that the starlight fell from the whites of her eyes and the enamel of her teeth; a light shudder went through her body – more like a light breeze moving the mysterious wave of her silk dress – and she gave a small gasp of imperceptible joy, the very breath of orgasm. Rachilde, The Juggler, 19002 The general psychiatric profession would obviously rate Rachilde’s Eliante among the sexual aberrations along with statuephilia, while Bohuslav Brouk would not hesitate to classify her satiation as a total derangement. I include Rachilde in this anthology because Marinetti mentions her novels La Jongleuse and Les Hors – Natura in his manifesto as foreboding dispositions of touch. The following text of Albert Marenčin also works with tactile senses in the reader’s mind and appeals to his tactile experience and imagination. Naturally, it’s not possible yet to talk about tactile art, but just as in a painting, even words are capable of inducing a tactile notion, and precisely in this inner train of thoughts is hidden one of the potential possibilities of tactile art. Besides, connecting words with tactile sensations seems to be more appropriate than with a painting since both (word notion and tactile notion) are acted out before our inner vision, where our normal ‘corrupted’ vision has no access. Naturalistic elements of Spanish Baroque (gluing glass tears or real hairs on polychromatic statues) were meant to emphasise the emotional effect on the believers. The ‘realistic’ statue was designed to affect human sensory perception in a global sense. This exalted art was evidently capable of bringing about identification with the models presented by the church; to experience, vicariously, the suffering or holiness of the pictured witnesses, as if in ‘one’s own body’. Naturalistic elements, with their tactile values, played the main role in the possibility of such identification.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 85

6/03/2014 10:04 am

56. Jan Van Eyck: Homage to the Lamb (detail), 1432

57. Jan Van Eyck: Portrait of Arnolfinio Couple (detail), 1434

58. Pedro de Mena: Crying Virgin Mary, second half of seventeenth century

59. Crying Madonna, Church of The Holy Martyrs, Malaga

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 86

6/03/2014 10:04 am

short anthology of tactile art

87

The Secret, 1980 Albert Marenčin I prepared a washing powder cardboard box, to put a secret in. I wrapped it up in a newspaper, so as not to see it; I wanted to hide it within a fragrant, multicoloured box. To tell the truth, I could easily have looked at it but I didn’t: I wanted it to stay a secret; after all, everyone has some secret, why not me? I wrapped it up with my eyes closed, so I couldn’t see it, even by chance. ‘If I see it even for an instant,’ I thought, ‘it will lose its magic power, it will cease to be a secret.’ And I wanted it to stay a secret forever. Although I tried, I didn’t succeed to keep it the way I wished. I always imagined it to be small and delicate, able to arouse giddy notions, even desires. But, as I was wrapping it up in the newspaper, not looking at it, I touched it, not wanting to, and realized that it was entirely different: it was as large as a piano, even had keys on its side, but they were organ keys. When, while wrapping it, I accidentally touched one of them, it gave out a wailing tone. ‘Organ again.’ I thought. It disturbed me. My fingers revealed what till then I was so anxiously averting my eyes from, and I was disappointed. It was so large that both ends of it were sticking out of the newspaper in which I was blindly wrapping it: one end felt very grand, it reminded me of a Corinthian marble column’s capital, the other end was furry and round like an apple. I didn’t want to uncover any more but my fingers were somehow sliding over it and I felt a moist and slippery fold at the round end. My heart pounded: I knew that with the slightest movement the secret could be out. If even a tiny part were uncovered all would be lost. I also knew that in its place I would receive something else, unexpected, but perhaps equally mysterious. The magical attraction of this double secrecy was greater than my fears and defences and so my hand, instead of pulling away, closed tighter around the secret object and grasped it. At that moment the fold opened like a pair of lips and my middle finger slipped into its soft and warm moistness. Ah, the sweet secrecy! Ah, the dizziness of knowledge! I could feel exciting, perfumed liquid running down my fingers, down my whole body, and its delicious vibrations were carrying me away with it. The organ pipes sounded, the earth trembled under the hooves of Teutonic horse riders, the Corinthian column crashed thunderously into a chasm. When all became still, I opened my eyes and saw your face, white in the moonlight. But the secret was lost. Forever. In vain did I search for it – never again did I find it.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 87

6/03/2014 10:04 am

60. Man Ray: L’enigme d’Isidore Ducasse, 1920

61. Pablo Picasso: Guitar, 1912

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages.indd 88

62. Umberto Boccioni: Fusion of Head and Window, 1912

3/03/2014 12:06 pm

63. Gunther Uecker: Object Made from Nails, 1962

64. Jean Dubuffet: Plastic Art Made from Bath Sponge, 1950

65. Claes Oldenburg: Soft Washstand, 1966

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages.indd 89

66. Piero Gilardi: Pumpkin, 1966

3/03/2014 12:06 pm

90

Touching and Imagining

67. Jiří Kolář: A Blind Poem (typed without ribbon), 1962

68. Jannis Kounellis: Piece Made from Cotton, 1967

During the period of hermetical cubism (1911–1914), cubist experimentation turns its attention to the fragments of raw reality (mainly to so-called papiers collés), which they incorporate into the painting’s composition.3 Similarly, Umberto Boccioni at that time produces his plastic ‘Fusion of Head and Window’ made by combining iron, porcelain and female hair. With such steps, a way is opened for a sort of ‘creative tactilism’. At the time, this is presumed to act as a refreshment or a deliberately provoking degradation of classical creative advancement. (Picasso, at that time, with provocative humour, declares that the epoch of painting has ended.) In contrast to the Spanish Baroque, it frees the naturalistic structures from their realistic context and allows them to be effective purely with their tactile values. These materials and structures are not designed for a direct tactile contact and are arranged largely from a creative point of view, or are used to renew elements of other creative techniques (drawings, paintings). Even so, their tactile values are in the use of real materials (sand mixed with paint, various structural pieces of paper and glue, textiles, feathers, twine, wires, straw from a mat, etc. Freed from their utilitarian context, their tactile values are adequately able to prove their value against imperialistic sight, even though still through sight’s mediation. This ‘tactilismus’ is in many cases not deliberate, it is unconscious, unintentional and, in the majority of cases, without a psychological background. The form of ‘creative tactilism’ was again revived by neo-Dadaism, pop art, new realism and soft art. Tactile art Guillaume Apollinaire I am honoured and pleased to announce the birth of a new form of art that can be, without any misgivings, included in the category of ‘creative arts’. This new art is tactile art. I thought of it last year as I was writing a short story titled, ‘My Dear Ludovic’, which was included in the Almanach des Lettres et des Arts published by Martine. This is how I defined the new art’s parameters. My dear Ludovic, I wrote, had discovered the new art of touch, contact, tactilism. I won’t go into a detailed description of how dear Ludovic was touching us, how he

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 90

6/03/2014 10:04 am

short anthology of tactile art

91

tickled us, hit us with blows of various kinds and intensity to experiment with this new art, and how we patiently tolerated it . . .  Nevertheless, I intend to impart to you that this art, the rules and techniques of which are now rapidly developing, rests on the principle that each and every object affects us differently, according to its special qualities and the sense of touch: dryness, dampness, wetness, various degrees of cold and heat, stickiness, coarseness, smoothness, softness, hardness, springiness, oiliness, silkiness, velvetiness, roughness, graininess etcetera, randomly combined or contrasted, become the rich material from which my friend Ludovic derives witty, grandiose combinations of tactile sensations, that silent music that stimulates our nerves . . . My dear friend Ludovic insisted that all kinds of tactile contacts, felt simultaneously, result in a sensation of emptiness, because, as he said, it is well known that nature abhors emptiness, and what we consider emptiness is, in reality, solidity itself. This is what I wrote, among other things, in my short article; but now tactile art that I had only forecast, announced and speculated about, has been born. One proof of it is a photograph, printed in a special undated magazine bizarrely titled RONGWRONG. It was published in New York sometime between 5 May 1917 and August of the same year. The photograph shows plaster for touching at Zayas’s. ‘Plaster for Touching,’ is the expression used by the artist himself. The author of this first tactile work is the artist Clifford Williams and I leave you to choose what special title you want to give him; I myself, in my short article, didn’t consider, a priori, what to call the creators who practise the art of touch and, from the moment I first saw the reproduction in RONGWRONG, I was vainly searching for some neologism that would properly describe the character of this new kind of creativity. Whichever way, what I am writing here is true. And so, thanks to Mrs, Miss or Mr Clifford Williams, a new field of aesthetics has grown to a degree beyond our imagination. Someone once said that to discover a new recipe for a meal is of greater significance for humankind than to discover a new star. I think that to discover a new form of art is more significant than to discover a new ragout. Our descendants, with their refined taste, will be grateful for many delicate joys to my friend Ludovic and, above all, to Clifford Williams who was allowed to exhibit the first plaster for touching in the year 1917 at Zayas’s. Let us not be dismissive of these modest beginnings; film, which these days is such a great public art, started even more modestly. In its beginnings, which were not so long ago, it was child’s play. Likewise, what my friend Ludovic and Mr Clifford Williams invented and created with their own hands became a truly poetic work, since poetry is nothing but creation. Guillaume Apollinaire, 1917–184 Apollinaire’s Ludovic is already a tactilist of his own volition. It is not just about high blood pressure, about an exceptional disposition towards tactile perception, not even about the revival of a traditional creative arsenal, but it is about conscious experimentation. This is already the attitude that opens up a way towards the kind of real tactile art that I am thinking of. But Apollinaire is making a mistake when he places tactile art in the category of creative manifestation. My own experimentation to date is more in agreement with Marinetti, who defends the specificity of tactile manifestation and on the contrary emphasises its difference from creative art. Besides, even the experimentation of Apollinaire’s Ludovic evidently stands apart from the field of creativity.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 91

6/03/2014 10:04 am

92

Touching and Imagining

69. Clifford Williams: Plâtre à Toucher chez De Zayas, 1916

Clifford Williams belonged, more-or-less, to the circle of New York Dadaists. Her Plaster for Touching is without a doubt the first tactile work worthy of such a name, as it is the first object designed for direct tactile contact with the perceiver. Even though her tactile plastics are, without doubt, too influenced by Dadaistic destruction of the advance of traditional classical art for her to be aware of the new form of artistic communication, nevertheless, Apollinaire was the only one of his time who guessed this was a truly original act by Clifford Williams. Tactile art was born.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 92

6/03/2014 10:05 am

short anthology of tactile art

93

Tactilism F. T. Marinetti Futurist Manifesto . . . read in Theatre de l’Oeuvre (Paris), during the World Exhibition of Modern Art (Geneva) and published in Comoedia, January 1921. Futurism, founded by us in Milan in 1909 gave the world a hatred of museums, academies and sentimentalism, active arts, protection of youth from all senility, celebration of illogical and insane innovatory genius, the artistic sensitivity for machinismus, speed, music halls, contemporary social enterprise of modern life, liberated speech, creative dynamism, rumblings and synthetic theatre. Nowadays, Futurism doubles its creative endeavour. This summer, in Antignano, where Ameriga Vesupucci Street, named after the discoverer of America, turns to run along the ocean, I discovered Tactilism. Red flags were flying above the factories occupied by the workers. I was naked in silky water torn by the cliffs – frothing scissors, knives and razors – among the seaweed cushions full of iodine. I was naked in the supple, steely sea that had a masculine and fecund breath. I drank from the chalice of the ocean, full to its shores with genius. With its long, sharp flames the sun vulcanised my body, colliding with the keel of my forehead that held its sails against the wind. A young woman, smelling of salt and hot stones smilingly regarded my first tactile tablet: ‘You amuse yourself by building tiny boats?’ I replied: ‘I am building a vessel to carry the human spirit to unknown shores.’ And here are my thoughts as a swimmer: The roughest and the most primitive majority of men emerged from the World War with one preoccupation, how to achieve greater material wellbeing. On the other hand, a minority, comprised of sensitive and discerning artists and thinkers, betrayed symptoms of a deep and secret illness that is probably the result of a massive, tragic body blow that the war dealt to humanity. This illness is manifested as sullen weakening, femalelike neurosis, hopeless pessimism, feverish indecisiveness of lost instincts and a plain lack of will. The roughest and the most primitive majority of men throw themselves into the revolution to achieve a communist paradise and, with a final attack, rush at the problem of happiness with a conviction that it will be achieved by satisfying all material needs and tastes. The intellectual minority ironically disdains this rush, and since they no longer find delight in the ancient joys of religion, art and love on which they based their privileges and sanctuary, lead a ruthless process against life itself, that they cannot enjoy, and give themselves up to strange pessimism, sexual perversions and artificial paradise of cocaine, opium and other drugs. This majority and this minority are declaring themselves for progress, civilization, mechanical power of speed, comfort, hygiene, Futurism; in short, all that is responsible for their past, current and future misfortunes. Almost all of them favour a return to primitive life, to slow and solitary meditation, far from the repugnant cities. As for us, the Futurists, we have courageously accepted the dramatic fight and we agree with all revolutionary attacks that the majority attempts. To the minority of artists and thinkers, we shout with all our might: Life is always truthful! Your artificial paradises with which you want to destroy it are useless! Stop dreaming about the nonsensical return to a wild and primitive life! Desist from judging higher forms of society, miracles of speed and hygienic comfort! Surrender rather to the cure of post-war illness by offering people living joy. Instead of destroying people’s conurbations, improve them.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 93

6/03/2014 10:05 am

94

Touching and Imagining

Strengthen the contacts and harmony between people, abolish their distancing and the obstacles that prevent love and friendship. Grant wholesomeness and beauty to the two chief manifestations of life: love and friendship. In the careful and non-traditional observations of all erotic and emotional expressions of friendship, I now understand that people talk to each other with their mouths and their eyes, but do not achieve true sincerity, owing to the insensitivity of their skin which remains a mere conductor of thoughts. While the eyes and the voices communicate what is substantive, the touching between two individuals with their jolts, clasps or frictions relates almost nothing. Wherefrom, then, the necessity to convert a handshake, a kiss and a contact into a permanent exchange of ideas. I started with submitting my contact to a deliberate care by excluding troublesome expressions of will and thoughts in other parts of my body, particularly on the palms of my hands. Such training is slow but quite easy and every healthy body can, with its help, achieve surprising and clear results. By contrast, people suffering unhealthy sensitivity that causes irritability and apparent weakness in their bodies, achieve such a high tactile effectiveness less easily and with less continuous certainty. I contrived the first training scale of touch, which also happens to be a scale of tactile values for Tactilism, the art of touch. First scale – surface With four categories of various contacts: First category: contact reliable, abstract, cold sand paper tinfoil Second category: contact without warmth, reliable, convincing smooth silk silken crêpe Third category: contact exciting, tepid, nostalgic velvet combed wool silken crêpe Fourth category: contact almost excitable, warm, capricious granular silk latticed silk spongy cloth Second scale – voluminous Fifth category: contact soft, warm, humane chamois horse or dog hair human hair or whiskers of African Marabou (bird)

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 94

6/03/2014 10:05 am

short anthology of tactile art

95

Sixth category: contact warm, sensual, intelligent, ardent this set has two branches: rugged iron plush light brush surface of skin or peach mushroom birds’ feathers wire brush With the aid of these various tactile differences I was able to create: 1. Simple tactile tablets that I introduced to our audience during the experiments or presentations about the art of contact. I laid them out into complementing or contrasting combinations of various tactile values described above. 2. Abstract or suggestive tactile tablets (to be explored by hand). These tactile tablets have combinations of various tactile values that enable hands to rove over them while searching for colour trails, whilst realizing development of striking feelings, their rhythm, alternately weak, pacing or tempestuous, being regulated by precise instructions. One of these abstract tablets made by me, bearing a title: Sudan – Paris, contains in its ‘Sudan’ part rough, tender, uneven, sharp, burning (spongy material, mushroom, sanding paper, brush, wire brush) contact values; in its ‘sea’ part it contains slippery, metal-like cold and tin foil values; in the ‘Paris’ part the values are tender, very tender, caressing, warm and at the same time cold (silk plush, feathers, tufts of hair). 3. Tactile tablets for different genders. These tactile tablets enable an investigation of tactile values by four matching hands of a man and a woman, to follow and evaluate their tactile passage. These tactile tablets are very different and the delight that they offer will unexpectedly enhance the two competing emotions that will attempt to better experience and better comprehend the complementing feelings. These tactile tablets have a purpose of replacing a dull chess game. 4. Tactile pillows. 5. Tactile sofas. 6. Tactile beds. 7. Tactile shirts and clothing. 8. Tactile rooms. In these tactile rooms, the floors and the walls would be made of large tactile tablets. The tactile values of ice, running water, rocks, metals, brushes, wiring carrying a low current, marble, velvet and floor rugs offering the naked feet of the dancers the greatest number of sensual and spiritual pleasures. 9. Tactile street. 10. Tactile theatre. We will have theatres adapted for Tactilism. The sitting spectators will rest their hands on tactile belts that will go around creating harmony of tactile sensations in various rhythms. The belts could also be fitted onto small revolving wheels with accompanying music and lights. 11. Tactile tablets for mobile improvisation A ‘Tactilist’ will express vocally the various tactile feelings that are enabling him to travel with his hand. His improvisation will be free of any rhythm,

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 95

6/03/2014 10:05 am

96

Touching and Imagining

syntax and basic and synthetic improvisation, as far removed as possible from human ‘Tactilists’. A ‘Tactilist’ improviser could be blindfolded but it would be better to enclose him in the light beam of a projector. Novices, who have not yet adequately developed their tactile sensitivity, would be blindfolded. As for the real Tactilists, the full light of the projector is preferable since darkness tends to bring about the likelihood of feelings becoming more abstract. Training of touch 1. It is necessary to keep gloves on the hands for a few days during which the brain will concentrate on developing a desire for various tactile feelings. 2.  Swimming under seawater and distinguishing different currents and temperatures by touch. 3. Counting and identifying every evening, in full darkness, all objects in one’s bedroom. This experiment I conducted for the first time in a dark underground trench in Gorice in 1917. I never had any intention to discover the genial forms of tactile sensations evident in Rachilde’s novels La Jongleuse and Les Hors – Natura. Other writers and artists had a presentiment of Tactilism, which is why the creative art of touch has existed for a long time. My great friend Bocchioni, the Futuristic painter and sculptor, experienced Tactilism when, in 1911, he created his fusion of head and window, from materials that were totally different in respect of weight and tactile values: iron, porcelain and female hair. My own Tactilism is realized art, totally different from creative art. It has nothing to do, nothing to achieve and in comparison to painting or sculpture, it can disappear. As far as possible, it is advisable to avoid usage of motley colours and coloured arrangements in the tactile tablets, as they arouse impressions characteristic of creative arts. Painters and sculptors, who are naturally inclined to subjugate tactile values to visual ones, will find it difficult to create any significant tactile tablets. It seems to me that Tactilism is especially the province of young poets, pianists, writers and all fine and strong erotic temperaments. Tactilism has to avoid cooperation, not only with creative art, but also with unhealthy eroticism. Its aim should be only a tactile harmony. In addition, Tactilism will serve the perfectibility of spiritual contact between humans via the skin. The classification of five senses is not by any means decisive and one day it will be possible to discover and classify many other senses. Tactilism will assist such discoveries. F. T. Marinetti, ‘The Manifesto of Tactilism’, Milan, 19215 With the Manifesto of Tactilism, Marinetti wanted to revive the flagging interest in Futurism that at the time was already overshadowed by the Dadaist movement. The Manifesto was meant to be a document heralding the renaissance (the second post-war wave) of Futuristic activity. However, for the Paris avant-garde, Marinetti was already a faded celebrity and Futurism had become a ‘classic’. That was why, without even taking any note of the substance of his ideas, they booed at him in the Theatre Oeuvre. Picabia accused him of plagiarism by referring to Clifford Williams’ experiments and called Marinetti’s Tactilism a ‘hysterical pregnancy’. This total failure evidently ended Marinetti’s excursion into the field of touch. In spite of all that, Marinetti is, without any doubt, the first theoretician of tactile art. His Futurist Manifesto, in spite of its bombastic Futurism and superficial view of problems of the tactile imagination, is in many ways

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 96

6/03/2014 10:05 am

short anthology of tactile art

97

70. Ay-O: Tactile Briefcase, 1963.

remarkable. In particular, the description of the object ‘Sudan – Paris’ (the object itself, which Marinetti circulated during his presentation as an example of Tactilism, has not been preserved) stands as an analogy between subjective feelings of a specific reality (desert, ocean, life in Paris) and tactile sensations expressing this reality. The object ‘Sudan – Paris’ was not only about tactile harmony, which according to Marinetti was the chief aim of Tactilism, but reaches into the deeper levels of imagination. Tactile poems Ladislav Novák (Introductory notes) The sense of touch is the most ignored, most uncultivated of all the senses, although it is in fact the primary sense, all the others have developed from it over a very long time. Lovers’ caressing cannot be considered as cultivation of the sense of touch, because it comprises experiences of a very narrow register, usually with little invention, superficially perceived and without any further development. As a remedy for our audiovisual, over intellectualized, neurotic culture I propose an expansion of tactile Poetism, a return to the fundamental substance of being. Two people generally practise tactile Poetism, an active person (A) and a passive person (P). During the course of the action, P is usually completely disrobed, eyes closed or blindfolded. For documentary purposes, P can describe and record the experiences but an absolute stillness is really preferable. Person A, as far as possible, also proceeds in complete silence or with only the briefest necessary instructions. The majority of contacts are made gradually, lightly, punctuated by longish pauses. It is important to avoid anything that may suggest sexual connotations. Under certain circumstances

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 97

6/03/2014 10:05 am

98

Touching and Imagining

and in some activities it is possible for one person to fulfil the functions of A and P, to become a tactile hermaphrodite. Clearly, it is also possible for A, in some activity, to be two persons. 1 A puts on two gloves, one made of rough bagging, the other of velvet, caresses P simultaneously with both hands over the whole body. 2 A inserts a rubber balloon between P’s hands (armpits, thighs) blows into it till it explodes. Repeats several times. 3 A puts an icicle into P’s hand. P holds the icicle till it melts. 4 P cups the hands. A inserts a live beetle into the space. 5 A puts P’s hands onto the trunk of an old cracked pear tree and instructs P to feel the trunk up and down. At head height is an ant trap of sticky tape around the trunk. 6 P lies down on the chest. A puts a one-centimetre steel ball between P’s shoulder blades. Very slowly A rolls the ball down the spine to the space between the buttocks, without touching the skin. Repeats with four or five balls, some can be warm, cold or even hot. 7 A leads the barefooted B over fine sand, gravel, mud, fine grass, thistles, freshly ploughed field, stubble field, concrete, soft asphalt, etc. 8 A gently caresses P’s lips with a razor blade. Hands the blade to P, suggests that P does it herself. 9 A hands a live guinea pig to P. It is assumed that P will become acquainted not only with the fine hair, body warmth, beating of the heart, but also with the sharp teeth of the animal. 10 A spills about a dozen ladybirds on P’s back (belly, lap). 11 A, holding a burning candle, drips wax onto P. Then onto slits between closed fingers, completely closing them with wax. (Can do the same with eyelashes, ears.) 12 A blows soap bubbles onto P so the bubbles explode on contact with skin.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 98

6/03/2014 10:05 am

short anthology of tactile art

99

Addendum only for the true experts of tactile poetry: Both persons are active, and passive, both are completely naked, have eyes closed and are silent. They can touch any part of the partner’s body but only with hands, any other contact is strictly outside limits. Duration of the tactile dialogue must be limited in advance (use alarm clock). Additional note: The author of the above admits that in his youth he used to have terrifyingly sweet dreams in which he was caressed by slim, unknown hands covering his whole body with eerie frost. Where are those hands, where is that eerie frost? If only its distant reflection would light up again with the recitation of these tactile poems! 23–24 November 1971 The tactile work of Ay-O can be regarded as an implementation of Marinetti’s tactile environment; Ay-O implemented and also created a number of other objects while seeking harmony of tactile sensations. Kocman’s tactile experiments are directed above all to the documentation of certain tactile situations. Even though these experiments have no direct relationship to imagination, they lead to an awareness of routine actions, and thereby to the sovereignty of touch as a sense and experience of its sensibility. Such experimentation, in its character, is closer to Gunther’s therapy, even though the precise moment of documentation is qualitatively significant. The generally antiaesthetic leaning of the ‘situations’ that Kocman creates is sympathetic to tactilism, he does not seek any harmony of structures and – sadly – not even of imagination. All the same, it counts as one of the authentic possibilities of non-imaginative tactile art. It is a given that he, of course, falls outside the field of our interest. The tactile poems of Ladislav Novák go beyond Gunther’s tactile instructions with certain aggression and latent eroticism. Thus they achieve much greater proximity to the imaginative tactilism towards which we are striving.

71. J. H. Kocman: Touch Study of My Surroundings, 1971

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 99

6/03/2014 10:05 am

100

Touching and Imagining

Tactile imagination in surrealism Second Manifesto of Poetism Karel Teige (Fragment) To realize this total and universal Poetism, a synthesis for all senses, which has been an unreachable absolute, a far away utopia of past history, it is necessary, above all, to accurately formulate its conditions, to research and examine its mode of expression and to look into the multifaceted response of the observer’s psyche, in short to base it on solid scientific foundations. It is then necessary to forgo the imperfect historical and mechanical materials and techniques, to create new tools, to discover and realize new modes of expression, and to that purpose, take possession of all implements and devices made available by the current science and technology. It is indeed possible to document that the history of art and society does not merely record a sequence of styles and movements, but also engenders real progress. It is quite conceivable that a person who masters the means of production as well as Rembrandt did is capable of producing works of far higher emotional potential, simply because the means are a thousand times better. We have relinquished the historical forms of painting and verification. Having given up the vocabulary of concepts we’ve grasped the vocabulary of reality. We’ve pointed at the possibility of poetry without words, at recitation with materials more reliable, constructive and scientifically controlled: poetry of colour, shapes, light, movement, sounds, smell, energy. Poetism evokes the proposition of new poetry that can poetise the whole cosmos with all the means today’s science and industry can offer, a proposition that wants to grasp the whole universe of human spirit and emotions through all its senses. The sacred and healthy thirst of our modern senses and nervous systems, the hunger of our personalities, the desires of the body and spirit, the life’s fire burning within us – élan vital, libido or tropisme vital – are not satisfied with what the current arts offer. Our sight yearns for other spectacles than what is offered by the tedious paintings in exhibitions and galleries, our touch wants to be cultivated and enchanted by rich sensations, the current music does not satisfy our ear, our taste finds satisfaction in perhaps the best cuisine of the world, the cuisine of France (which, not by accident, has been the land of the liveliest civilization and culture). We search for poetry that addresses all the human senses, saturating the spectators’ sensibilities, inwardly entertaining and enlightening them. We want to base this new poetry on a sensory, physiological alphabet, on the infinitesimal quiver of senses and nerves, these ‘strings of the soul’. Poetism wants to address all senses. Karel Tiege, 19286 When Karel Teige declared the position of the Second Poetist Manifesto, so close to the one taken by the French Surrealists with their Second Manifesto, and shifted Devětsil’s [Czech avant garde movement 1920–30] Poetism to the Surrealist camp, he certainly was right as far as the fundamental ideological position went (the affiliation of Surrealists and Poetists with the Marxists). However, in terms of sectional interests, for instance from the point of view of poetry, Poetism never took as radical an antiaesthetic stance as Surrealism did. It was a pity that the project of Poetry For the Five Senses (just freed of certain aesthetic, defensive clichés and a belief in the omnipotence

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 100

6/03/2014 10:05 am

short anthology of tactile art

101

of scientific progress) which was by its nature fundamentally rooted in the surrealistic demands of universal poetry, was left by the wayside. As for tactile poetry being one of the component poetries for five senses, Teige did not cross swords with Marinetti’s aesthetic ideas of Tactilism. Furthermore, he reveals considerable reservations towards the possibilities of touch, at least in the form it was left after thousands of years of subordination to utilitarian functions.7

S As soon as I dragged the bowl for paints out from somewhere, where my preromantic childhood placed the ruins of castles and palaces, as soon as I put down on paper, worthy of better things, the first starry tear of black mournful fermentation, as soon as I added to this flooded, muddy space a new sheet of paper and commenced to peel it off, after I smoothed it down with the back of my hand and saw the two flowing images, I was overcome with such fever that I had to put the thermometer outside the window and let the sunset sink on the lifeless, sturgeon-like skin of my bathers hanging over the foot of the bed, I dragging out the manic activity into the darkest night, which I would prefer to compare to amorous gymnastics, for which I used all my extremities (all of them), to provoke, with greatest intensity, the craziness of the universal painter’s genius, this time sloshing through the mud of chance. Vítězlav Nezval, Decalcomania, 19378

72. Oscar Dominguez: Decalcomania, 1937

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 101

73. Max Ernst: Frottage, 1925

6/03/2014 10:05 am

74. Salvador Dalí: The Persistence of Memory, 1931

75. Gala Eluard: Object with a Symbolic Function, 1931

76. Meret Oppenheim: Fur Dinner Suite, 1936

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 102

77. Micheline Bounoure: Object, 1959

6/03/2014 10:05 am

short anthology of tactile art

103

78. Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí: Un Chien Andalou, 1929

79. Oscar Dominguez: Arrival from the Old Times, 1936

80. Salvador Dalí: Tactile Cinema

I have invented and worked out to the last details a tactile cinema, whereby a spectator could, via a completely simple mechanism, in a synchronised way, touch everything that he sees; silk, furs, oysters, flesh, sand, dog, etc. Objects destined for the most physical and psychological delights. Then there are the most banal objects worthy only of being thrown angrily against the wall and smashed into thousands of pieces. Other objects would have hard edges and their spiky appearance would cause a sense of desperation, gnashing of teeth, etcetera, the kind of experience we have against our will when a fork is scraped along the top of a marble table. Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, 19419

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 103

6/03/2014 10:05 am

81. Frédérick Kiesler: Twin–Touch–Test, 1943 (VVV Almanac, No. 2–3)

82. Marcel Duchamp: Cover of VVV Almanac (detail)

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 104

6/03/2014 10:05 am

short anthology of tactile art

105

Twin Touch Test, 1943 Place your hands on top of either side of the wire screen: run both hands simultaneously gently down, fingers and palms remaining in close contact. Repeat and repeat until you can answer the following question: is it an unusual feeling of touch? If so, can you write an analysis of your experience in no more than one- hundred words. Give also your explanation of the phenomenon. Five Prizes will be given for the best solutions: each one a full year’s subscription to VVV. – if you don’t have a large piece of chicken wire approximately two by two feet – you can use for the test the back of this copy. – Put the magazine flat on the table, lift back cover into vertical position, join hands on both sides of the wire-screen. Fingertips touch each other and slide gently along screen towards you. – Repeat experiment ad libitum. This also applies to a team of two persons: a) put magazine flat on table b) lift back cover vertically c) both persons stand or sit next to each other d) the one at the left holds the bulk of the magazine lightly down on the table e) the person on the right grips the edge of the cover gently f ) the two remaining hands now join across the wire screen, fingertips touching g) proceed as indicated above Frédérick Kiesler, VVV Almanac, No. 2–3 If some surrealistic objects provoke touching, it is, undoubtedly because their tactile values are not used in a creative sense, but on the contrary, the anti-aesthetic function of the use of different materials acts on the deeper levels of our consciousness and thus arouses tactile emotions, albeit on the level of mediation by sight. They are able to stimulate in our touch extra-utilitarian memories and associations that are inexpressible thus far. There I discern a fundamental difference from ‘creative tactilism’, as well as Marinetti’s Tactilism. Surrealistic objects are undoubtedly, through their anti-aesthetic employment of different materials and structures, anchored in psychic functions, one of the main sources of imaginative tactile art.11 Apart from that, Surrealism works even with the metamorphosis of structures (Ernst’s Frottage) and the metamorphosis of their state (Dalí’s Persistence of Memory). These metamorphoses, although still via the intermediary of sight, cast some doubt on the utilitarianism of our touch, thereby not only heightening our sensibility but directly leading it into interpretative panic, which is, paradoxically, the mother of tactile imagination. Duchamp’s clear tactile gesture Please Touch, likewise Dalí’s drawing of tactile cinema, but above all Kiesler’s tactile experimentation Twin–Touch–Test take us directly to the hot grounds of tactile imagination. Even though such works stand on the very edge of the oeuvre of these artists, they are the evidence of the veracity of the dictum that substance often arises as a by-product (Ludvík Šváb). It is a matter of regret that the results of Kiesler’s tactile texts were not published, nor were they further developed. Gathering this material caused me many ambivalent feelings: on one hand a disappointment that I was not the first person who discovered Touch as art, on the other a satisfaction that I was not alone in setting out on this road. This anthology, as much as my experiments, are proof of an exceptional range of possibilities which touch

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 105

6/03/2014 10:05 am

106

Touching and Imagining

83. Marcel Duchamp: Please Touch, 1947

Objects would say more to us if we were to touch them in the darkness, or half-darkness.

Text above an exhibition of Surrealist objects, Paris 1936 Claude Cahun: ‘Beware of domestic objects!’10

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 106

6/03/2014 10:05 am

short anthology of tactile art

107

offers to art, not only in the area of techniques, but also in approach: from working with tactile imagery to direct tactile contacts. Drawing, collage, poetry, tactile action, travel writing, portraiture, theatre, film, documentation, architecture, furniture, all now exist in more or less latent forms, which makes the idea of mining these places full of novel ideas all the more exciting. 1978–83

84. Mikuláš Medek: Cranach’s Sur-lyricism, 1951–52

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 107

6/03/2014 10:05 am

85. Tactile Alphabet, 1978

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 108

6/03/2014 10:05 am

6 INSIDE

I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me – that I understand. Albert Camus, 19421 Ready-mades Tactile ready-mades can be found everywhere. It is enough to close one’s eyes and the first thing in our vicinity that we lay our hand on suddenly separates itself from its utilitarian context and becomes a secret object the use and sense of which we can only speculate about. And then it is possible for us to perceive these new things only in harmony with our desires. If, for instance, we were to invite the visitors to come to the Museum of Czech sculpture in Zbraslav at night, in complete darkness, and suggest that they feel the exhibits with their fingertips, tongues, naked feet, noses and foreheads, bare chests and backs, we would become new creators of these works. We would merely need to re-name and re-describe them. 1989

86. Avenger, 1990

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 109

6/03/2014 10:05 am

87. Hired Murderer, 1990

88. The Den, 1990

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 110

6/03/2014 10:05 am

inside

111

89. Found Tactile Object, 1984

When I first saw one (there was a whole row of them hanging on nails driven into the stable door frame), I felt that it was a waking dream in which some manifestation of tactile objects was projected into real life where they finally achieve some, to me unknown, rational function (the wear and tear of these objects stood as a clear testimony to their frequent usage). The local farmer, however, gave me an entirely different explanation: They were ‘dummies’ for the calves. Instructions for use: The ‘dummy’ is placed in the bucket with milk so that it floats on top; the calf will suck the milk through the dummy. How rational and simple.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 111

6/03/2014 10:05 am

90. A Week in Gesture, 1986

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 112

6/03/2014 10:05 am

inside

113

From the tactile diary

1 March 1982

I decided to write a tactile diary. It seemed that it could have a meaningful purpose. On one hand it should lead to greater self-awareness, on the other to an immediate experience of the most banal actions, on an unaccustomed and unconventional sensory level. To become aware of what exactly the body is experiencing. I am aware of the difficulty of the task because a man’s intellect normally doesn’t concern itself with such things; the vocabulary of this field is woefully poor and is further degraded by old women’s litanies of their medical problems. Perhaps Bernard Gunther’s tactile therapy could be a guide, though I certainly wouldn’t be interested in tactile meditations, at least not exclusively so. 3 March 1982 I thought that I would start first thing in the morning, while making breakfast, but that wasn’t practical. It appears that I am not adequately prepared for such an exercise. I tried to concentrate on the cold metal of the coffeepot, on the antiseptic smoothness of the porcelain cup, the roughness of the bread crust, but it didn’t seem to be powerful enough. Then the telephone interrupted me as well as the aroma of ground coffee freshly infused with boiling water. My concentration was gone. 6 March 1982 I came close to giving up the whole project as utopian, but last night I had a tactile dream and that gave me encouragement. I have been hoping for such a dream right from the start of this experiment but except for some micturating dreams, I didn’t have any other tactile ones. Not till last night. Nothing as grand as Maury’s guillotine dream but at least it was something: I am playing tennis, but instead of hitting the ball with the racquet I must hit a live wasp. I keep chasing the wasp with my racquet, but I keep missing. At the same time my effort is making it angry. It keeps circling me and tries to attack my ears. The wasp’s dives are progressively wilder and angrier. I am unable to hit it. It is now touching the underneath of my ear lobe. Fearful that I will be stung any moment, I wake up. I find that the corner of my pyjama top is turned up and is rubbing my ear lobe. Encouraged, I immediately embark on tactile self-consciousness. I experiment by getting dressed with my eyes closed. First, try to touch the chair that my clothes are on. I have a problem with finding the socks. In the end I find them inside the trouser legs. Am unable to tell the difference between the inside and outside of the singlet. I try to really experience every touch. To be aware of it, at the same time to search for any associations with some hidden touches. I am watching out for the visualization of the whole action. Initially it all seems very ordinary, all this preoccupation seems to be a childish nonsense. After a while, I have a strange feeling in which this banal activity becomes a novel experience. As if this utilitarian activity suddenly acquired a new dimension. Suddenly it became a ritual. (Getting dressed has always been a ritual, it only became a practical activity in our modern times.) Dressing as a tactile art. From this almost mystical experience, I am disturbed by the suppressed laughter of my son Vašek who has just got out of bed, evidently observing my activities and, not understanding, has burst into laughter. I don’t feel like explaining anything. In future I will be more discreet. 7 March 1982 Everybody is asleep. I am in the room with Ťiapka, the dog. Caressing the dog assuages erotic desire.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 113

6/03/2014 10:05 am

114

Touching and Imagining

16 October 1983 Something smooth, velvety, warm, something with gentle waves, with rounded peaks. A soft edge, submissive to fingers, lightly salty to lips, swollen, recurring, supple on the tongue, another curve, gently fuzzy. Larger than the previous one, something ringlike, with fine hair, held between two soft cylinders. Something warmly damp, beyond reach, inundating, above immediate tactile experience, something like a boy’s trouser pocket full of glass marbles, like the touch of ripened wheat on naked groin, something like a sloping bank leading from the river, as when we grab a tuft of grass to get out of the water. Something without obstacles, like a muff, a hand under a stone. Rhythm of warmth and cold, poppy seeds on the palm of the hand . . .  11 February 1984 What do you call a person who is interested in tactile art, not just the art, but also the tactile perception of the world? Sight has its spectator, hearing – a listener, taste – a gourmet, smell is not so easy: a sniffer, but that smacks of toluene necromania; then there is a word like hound, but that belongs to another field. Touch comes out the poorest. The only word that seems to have a tie with it is groper, but that, too, seems to indicate an entirely different activity than what we are thinking of. It does indicate how tactile sensations are undervalued in our lives, how they are relegated to an inferior role. Yet etymologically, grasping something is derived from the word to grasp, that is to touch it, to grasp it, to hold it, to take possession of it with one’s hands. If we want to find out the substance of something, first we must take it into our hand. And yet for this action, in relation to a person who does it, we don’t have a suitable word. What a shame. 14 February 1984 Heraclitus differentiated two basic, dialectical pairs of tactile values: warm – cold, wet – dry. Aristotle expanded this to include another five: heavy – light, hard – soft, tough – brittle, rough – smooth, dense – thin. It could perhaps be made even broader by inclusion of compacted – loose, then a further, but not so clearly defined pair, with a certain emotional colouring: pain – pleasure and then some singular, descriptive expressions, velvetiness, prickliness, sogginess, glutinousness, liquidity, gelatinousness, jelly-likeness. With such a threadbare arsenal it is not possible to express the richness of our tactile life. 15 February 1984 Today I resolve to conduct a small tactile experiment. I decide to follow one of Marinetti’s directions for the sharpening of tactile sensibility. Vašek is at school, Eva still asleep. I put a blindfold over my eyes, strip naked and set out from the bedroom door to my study on the ground floor. My final goal is to find my typewriter, put in a sheet of clean paper and type: ‘Touch is a sense equal to the others’. I tread lightly on the carpet. It ends. Wooden floor. With my bare foot I feel for the threshold and my hand searches for the banister leading downstairs. Suddenly, there is the sound of breaking glass and something rolling down the steps. I freeze and quietly swear to myself. I forgot that we put used crockery on the shelf near the banister to be taken down by whoever goes down to the kitchen. Luckily the noise doesn’t wake Eva up. The descent downstairs will now be considerably more difficult. I will have to tread very carefully, to avoid stepping on the broken porcelain and injuring myself. I hesitate, considering interrupting the experiment and sweeping the mess up. But I decide to

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 114

6/03/2014 10:05 am

inside

115

continue. It will be riskier but fear of injury will force me to sharpen my senses. Very lightly, I put my foot on the first step. I know that the dangerous area starts on about the fifth step but all the same I put my foot down very carefully – first the big toe, then, with a cradle like movement, the rest of the foot. Finally I transfer my weight onto the heel. So I progress step by step. The ‘dangerous steps’, surprisingly, go quite smoothly. I’ve worked out a system. I put the edge of my foot down as close as possible to the wall then ‘sweep’ the step towards the centre to clear it for both feet. With this ‘sweeping’ method I conquer the whole staircase without, I assume, any injury (without feeling any injury). I reach the bottom. If I turn right I’ll get to the kitchen, but I must walk through the hallway, then a small lobby to reach my study. The tiles are cold. I still tread very carefully. There could be some broken pieces even here, in the hallway. With my hands I reconnoitre the space ahead of me. All the time, I must hold onto something because I have to stand on one foot while the other foot is reaching out and feeling the floor ahead. It’s hard to keep my balance. My foot bumps against a chair standing in the hall. I sit down to have a rest. In my mind I estimate how many more steps before I reach the door to the small lobby. I conclude a maximum of three to four steps. I get there. I trip over a pair of shoes. (The lobby is square, one and half by one and half metres. There are four doors: to the hall – where I entered – straight ahead is the door to my room – where I am heading – on the left is the door to the bathroom and on the right out to the street.) The doorbell makes a shrill sound. Automatically I reach for the door, undo the lock and open it. There is a scream. I tear my blindfold off. In front of me, with a terrified expression, stands the mail delivery woman. Only now do I realize that I am naked. Quickly I put my hand on my crotch and stammer some apologies about having just gotten out of the bath. I grab a letter from her hand and quickly shut the door. The doorbell rings again. I throw a coat over myself and open the door again. The letter is a registered one and I have to sign for it. As I return the pen to the mailwoman I notice her looking down with astonishment. My feet are covered in blood. At that moment I feel like a vampire. 1 January 1985 A tactile object is the only work of art which can become more substantive, more emotional, the more often it comes into immediate contact with its ‘perceiver’ and can, dare I say, to a certain degree even change his or her sense of it (content, meaning, emotive capacity). Every artwork, with a change of social circumstances, undergoes a change in the field of its actual interpretation. But that’s not what I am thinking of. I am not thinking of a change in utilitarian substance, a re-actualisation of the work, but a change in the emotive capacity of the substance. Looking at a painting or listening to a musical composition, the observer or listener does not ‘add’ anything to the work, his communication with it takes place on the level of subjective experience. After the departure of the observer or the listener, the painting or composition remains objectively the same, ready for the next observer and listener. (Similarly a meal or a fragrance – I am referring to the non-changeability of taste or smell.) It is different with a tactile object. With every touch the object changes, it enriches the emotions of everyone who touches it. Not only visibly (with covered objects), where after a while the fingers leave on the object, or on some parts of it, visible traces (dirt, grease, surface wear and so on) but also on an emotional level. Every sensory touch necessarily ‘charges’ the object emotionally. A tactile object acts as an accumulator into which those perceiving invest their emotions at the moment of touching. Of course, they also reciprocally drain off the emotions that have been invested into it, firstly by the maker and secondly by all

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 115

6/03/2014 10:05 am

116

Touching and Imagining

the others that have touched the object since then. I venture to state that the emotional content of a tactile object constantly changes; that we touch the same, yet at the same time an altogether different, object. It is this emotional and permanent metamorphosis that is one of the fundamental characteristics of tactile art. 3 March 1985 It’s Saturday. Eva went to visit Verunka. I am at home with Vašek. I am initiating him into my new plan. I want to experimentally bring about a tactile dream. At first, he thinks that I have gone crackers but gradually he starts to comprehend or, at least, he thinks that it might be fun and agrees to participate. I shall try to go to sleep, then Vašek (analogically, like the co-operator of Marquis d’Hervey) will put a scrubbing brush on my forehead and a minute later will spill out a bagful of dried peas on my bare belly. After another minute he will wake me up (providing I have not woken up already). We’re getting the props ready, putting them on a chair next to the bed. Vašek hangs my ‘film’ stopwatch around his neck. I put on my pyjama trousers. I wash down two Rohypnols with tea left over from breakfast. I lie down on the bed fully expecting that I will go to sleep within several minutes. Vašek sits at the foot of the bed and waits, holding the stopwatch. But sleep is not coming, on the contrary I feel a kind of euphoria. Perhaps it is my excitement about the expected result of the experiment or I took the wrong pills. The situation is becoming embarrassing. The more I try to go to sleep, the more awake I am. I try to will myself into it, I try, yoga-like, to relax all my muscles, but sleep is eluding me. After half an hour Vašek gets bored with it all and goes outside, leaving me at the mercy of my uncontrollable agitation.

91. The Way, 1989

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 116

6/03/2014 10:05 am

inside

117

Travel diary

First I took my shoes off and stepped with my bare feet onto the bath mat (terry cloth). I took my clothes off. I threw them away from me as far as possible. It is 14 July 1979. Place: Forest in Truby, in Kostelec Upon Black Forest. I put on a black blindfold. In my hands I hold two woollen socks (for documentation). It is ten in the morning. I put cotton wool into my nostrils and ear canals. I spin around and around in one spot. I lose my orientation (but I don’t fall over). I stop spinning (my head keeps spinning, but I don’t lose my balance). With my right arm I reach out in front of me. I have stepped into an experiment in one of the blankest places on the map of our sensibility. I step off the bath mat, the last vestige of tactile civilization. Carefully I put my foot down on the ground. Even before the skin touches the soil, I register around the hand of my outstretched arm (but also around my groin and crotch) a light air current. Yes, I am moving. The contact of my sole with the ground is of course, more ‘touchy’. Even though I know that I am in the forest, in fact I remember the immediate surroundings from the view I saw before I started on this journey; the first isolated contact with forest ground is unexpectedly intense. The signal of contact with the tense skin of my sole runs through my whole body. I savour the novelty of this feeling. Suddenly I realize that my right foot is still on the bath mat. I concentrate on the parallelism of the two contacts. Then the right foot leaves the mat and is set down next to the left foot. The tactile experience is repeated with the right foot, but doesn’t feel so new. Gently I flex my toes. I transfer my weight from one foot to another. I bend down and from under the left foot pick up a handful of forest humus. I run it through my fingers: it contains slightly prickly pine needles, dry leaves and decomposing peat. I also feel three somewhat more compacted pieces of something woody (bits of roots, or piece of decaying pine cone or tree bark). I put it all into one of the woollen socks. Next step. The layer of dry leaves is deeper. Strange, it’s not a visual image that intrudes, more an aural one – the rustle of leaves. Under the right foot I feel a small piece of a branch. I put it into the sock. I take another several careful steps. The novelty of contact is slowly wearing off, is changing to fear. I am obviously out of reach of the close vicinity that is still in my memory from before tying the blindfold. My hand is anxiously trying to feel for the closest tree. I hold the other hand, holding the socks, in front of my face. I fear the branches. Under my feet are still only leaves and pieces of twigs. Finally the outstretched hand catches a springy end of some tree branch. I am nearing a tree. The ends of my fingers feel its coarse structure. I get closer with my whole body. Slowly I press against it, my legs lightly around the trunk, arms embracing it. I press hard against the tree and feel the pattern of the bark pressing into my skin. Into my left thigh, about twenty centimetres above the knee, a stump is pressing into my flesh painfully. The pain is not unpleasant, I find myself pressing more into the trunk. I am overtaken by some masochistic pleasure. I stay like that, in the tree embrace, for about one minute, then the excitement dies away, the skin gets used to the pressure and the immediate tactile sensation loses its intensity. I ease off the embrace, feeling stickiness on my belly, probably some fresh resin. It can’t be wiped off. It is an unpleasant, squeamish feeling, now it is on my hands as well. I try to wipe it off on the tree trunk. Finally I get rid of it by rubbing

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 117

6/03/2014 10:05 am

118

Touching and Imagining

my hands in the soil. With mixed feelings I continue on my way. I collect all objects that I feel with my feet. Several pinecones, small rocks, one deformed tin (from pâté), twigs, pieces of bark – it all goes into the woollen socks. Now there is something hard, it scrapes my sole. I try to identify it, loosen the pressure on my foot, then lightly rub it to and fro with the sole; it doesn’t seem to be a rock, that would be colder; nor is it a pine cone – I already have my experiences with those. One end seems to be fashioned by human hand – or a machine? Some kind of smooth ball, with a sharp, protruding spike in the middle? I can’t identify it. My imagination forms a certain shape, but it doesn’t remind me of anything concrete. I can’t get rid of a feeling that I have touched something like that before and that it was associated with pleasure. No, it’s not a natural object, at least not completely. It’s as if one end of it is warmer, or is that mere illusion? No, there, where it has been ‘worked on by human hand’, it is evidently warmer; I confirm that with the other foot, although possibly it is an illusion caused by the fact that the ‘natural’ end is rough, whilst the ‘man-made’ end is smooth. Another discovery: the object is not complete. I can clearly feel ‘ragged’ (as if caused by breakage) ‘splinters’ in one part of the ‘natural end’. With my toes I try to grasp the object to deliver it to the hands for more thorough identification. I lose my balance and fall into a sitting position. An unpleasant, slightly painful feeling. I get up quickly. As I was falling, my toes lost the object. I feel with my foot all around me but can feel only dry leaves and twigs. I search with my hands, I am possessed by a desire to find that mysterious object. Nothing. I lose control. Hysterically, I dig through the leaves. I tear the blindfold off my face and keep rooting through the leaves in a ten-metre radius. I crawl on all fours and dig through the leaves and broken branches. I advance systematically. I find several pieces of bark, even strangely shaped remains of decaying tree stumps, several cones, but nothing resembling my previous tactile experience. I collect the woollen socks filled with documentation from the ground where I dropped them during my fall and return disappointedly to the bath mat. Several times over the next few days I return to the same location hoping that my feet would find the mysterious object, but all in vain.

92. Reconstruction of Found and Subsequently Irretrievably Lost Object (based on tactile memory), n.d.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 118

6/03/2014 10:05 am

93. Documentation, 1979

94. ‘Twin-Coloured’ Tactile Collage (sandpaper and fur), 1978

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 119

6/03/2014 10:05 am

95. Tactile Study, 1979

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 120

6/03/2014 10:05 am

96. Tactile Study, 1979

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 121

6/03/2014 10:05 am

97. Man (tactile collage), 1978

98. Woman (tactile collage), 1978

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 122

6/03/2014 10:05 am

inside

123

99. Welcoming Touch (tactile collage), 1978

Tactile collage The materials for classical collages are images of objects, or their parts, taken out of their logical context. Tactile collages are above all structures of reality and their emotional value. Touch, which is weighted down with utilitarian habits due to its initial lack of cultivation, attempts identification, but in a material structural collage it misses the real shape of objects. It is not used to identifying things merely on the basis of structure. In practice its identifying function is, in the majority of cases, only a subsidiary to the function of vision. That is why the information that touch alone can supply to our brain, has a confusing and quite subjective character. In a traditional collage, two seemingly unconnected realities are brought together, and the contact is made in an unorthodox place. A spark of irrational beauty leaps out from these contacts. In a tactile collage, there is a connection of structures that can quite happily take place in real life. For instance the structure of fur and the structure of wood – a woman sitting on a park bench or a dead fox lying on the floor of the forester’s hut. Since for a complete identification, touch misses the sense of real shape, it is not possible to decide from the structure if it is about a shot fox sitting on a park bench or a woman wearing a fur lying on the floor of a forest hut. The structure in a tactile collage is defined by shape, the realization of the author’s desire and a product of analogical thinking. Touch gets lost in the labyrinth of mystification, its stubborn desire for identification going against its will in the service of imagination. The tactile collage ‘Man’, ‘Welcoming Touch’ and ‘Woman’ make a meaningful triptych. The collages ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ are created from identical structures symbolising unity of connection. The shape of these structures, their mutual proportions, preferences and contacts characterize their diversity. ‘Welcoming Touch’ is a kind of ‘two coloured collage’ of a supple, warm handshake with a cold unfriendly border.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 123

6/03/2014 10:05 am

124

Touching and Imagining

100. Plucking Out (realized photograph), 1990

Dialogue between the right and left hand Right hand: Left hand: Something sandy gritty Something porridge-like adhering Something very sharp Something muddy squelchy Suddenly resisting our will resisting our handshake Something yielding shape-changing randomly formatted Perhaps feathers Yet suddenly rigidified into one of many borderline forms Coldness Something we can’t get rid of Touch of one’s fingers on one’s palm! 1979

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 124

6/03/2014 10:05 am

101. Fossil (realized photograph), 1990

102. Defence (realized photograph), 1990

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 125

6/03/2014 10:05 am

Dialogue Vision – Touch (Eva Švankmajerová – Jan Švankmajer) 103 (1). Question (Eva Švankmajerová): ‘This dreadful habit of observing from the outside or inside, is really called portraiture?’

103 (2). Reply (Jan Švankmajer): ‘No, because to portray someone means to capture the skin in a certain state of repose. In better instances it attempts to demonstrate an outer manifestation of the spirit, a bit like when an actor tears up the scenery in which he performs, to indicate to the audience that he is angry. For me, this kind of play means the overturning of the senses. The dramatic characters are of course not interchangeable, but the senses are.’

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 126

6/03/2014 10:05 am

103 (3). Question (Eva Švankmajerová): ‘People who were not sufficiently perceptive to the common spirit of times, phenomena and place, would be unable to express themselves to whoever they would be talking to? Why then do you insist here that dramatic characters are not interchangeable? And that senses are? Is it possible with the sense of “touch” to comprehend a spirit so eccentric that it is a wonder that anyone can put up with it?’

103 (4). Reply (Jan Švankmajer): ‘It is a mistake to say things face to face, change from hand to hand and even to live from hand to mouth. On the contrary, one ought to say things from nose to nose, change from ear to ear and altogether live from mouth to hand (similarly from hand to ear, from nose to eye etc). It is also possible to catch mice with the face, or to put breasts into shoes. Such are the laws of synaesthesia.’

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 127

6/03/2014 10:05 am

103 (5). Question (Eva Švankmajerová): ‘The events to which I’m now referring are, after all, something general in essence? It appears that those whom they didn’t touch have been deprived of something?’

103 (6). Reply (Jan Švankmajer): ‘Of course, and not only deprived, because misunderstanding is always on the horizon.’

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 128

6/03/2014 10:05 am

103 (7). Question (Eva Švankmajerová): ‘Those who don’t participate in the happenings can’t be deceived by them, or could they be? And how, damn it, would that error proceed?’

103 (8). Reply (Jan Švankmajer): ‘An error begins the moment the rubber hands of the first hours touch us. Then we are formed by other hands, and others and still others. And at the same time we use our own hands to collect “documents” with which we stuff old stockings. However, I may be wrong.’

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 129

6/03/2014 10:06 am

103 (9). Question (Eva Švankmajerová): ‘Do you also think that this is my grandest clothing?’

103 (10). Reply (Jan Švankmajer): ‘Yes. Clothes represent the most bestial obstacle, they are the civilising condom, preventing tactile conception. But even nudity needs to be formulated.’

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 130

6/03/2014 10:06 am

103 (11). Question (Eva Švankmajerová): ‘Clothes too? To me it seems that the obstacle to agreement, followed by possible comprehension, is not just the skin, fat and muscles or hair. Perhaps truth rests with the most direct idea, that is the skeleton?

103 (12). Reply (Jan Švankmajer): ‘Something is always like something different. The fragrance of uncertainty. The skeleton as the covering of flesh and skin as an envelope for clothes; like a wardrobe. Even the shoe brush fits in (or is it not a shoe brush?). And somewhere in the corner the forgotten pine cones from the vacation. And all that is the truth. Naked truth.’

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 131

6/03/2014 10:06 am

104. The Reverse of Touch (tactile drawing), 1978 Instructions for touching: First have a careful look at the drawing. Select a place from which to begin and start touching. Select also the direction of movement of your fingers. Gently place fingers on the starting point, close your eyes and set off on the journey from memory. For the whole time keep repeating in your mind: ‘I will never see this again.’

105. Suddenly Elsewhere (tactile drawing), 1978

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 132

6/03/2014 10:06 am

inside

133

106. Superstructure (tactile drawing), 1978

107. Duel (tactile drawing), 1978

In the cellar, 1978 Something rough, something cracked Something recognisably coarse Falling Something like metal, slippery Crumbling Slippery Something cold as metal Something loose, piecemeal, hard Somewhat greasy Something flourlike Something smooth, rounded Something loose, piecemeal, heavy Lightly resisting Something piecemeal, hard, flourlike Something coarse Something soft, lithe Nothing Cooling Something coarse Something greasy, gluey Nothing, something coarse Drying Nothing, something coarse Something sharp Nothing Hurting Etc.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 133

6/03/2014 10:06 am

134

Touching and Imagining

Imaginary portrait of Emila Medková (Written with regard to her tactile values) In 1921, when Marinetti was putting together the ‘Educational scale of touch’ Emila Medková was not yet among the living. Perhaps that is the real reason why Emila Medková used neither of the two tactile scales (logarithmic or exponential) in her tactile evaluation. Perhaps there is a little of the third group of the logarithmic scale: ‘contact exciting, tepid, nostalgic velvet combed wool silken crêpe’ We won’t get very deep though, even if we take the sixth exponential scale: ‘contact warm, sensual, intelligent, ardent plush fuzzy surface of skin or peach birds’ feathers’ My instructions: Insert hands into tepid water and, without losing a single drop to the floor, hit a doorframe with the palms. And now, when the palms are swollen with a blazing feeling of pain and the fingers are feeling somewhat numb, slowly, as if we were gently exhaling, reach out to touch Emila Medková: Water everywhere: Water everywhere Water everywhere Heating up Heating up On fire Preliminary notes on the tactile portrait of Eva Švankmajerová, 1976 At the centre of the object, where the hand inserted in an elbow sleeve first touches with the fingertips ‘the face’, it is necessary to place something pleasantly soft, covered in places with fuzz, preferably of circular shape, so that the initial tactile impression will be pleasant and will overcome any shyness and fear of the unknown. It will embolden the hand and make it easier to slip into the trap. The direction of touch is usually into the left corner, where we are used to finding the beginning of everything, and there we also have to start with our own portrait. From the smooth, slippery peak a cold, metal spike must protrude, to which a nylon slope is fixed, ascending through the whole object so that in the opposite corner it changes into a tied descent. It is important that the back of the hand, traumatized by the contact with the ascending spike, is freely stroked by the hanging tuft of lion’s fur, and in this ambivalent state slides on the taut diagonal to the point of descent, to which two inflated fish bladders should be fixed, or at least two plastic bags, inviting manipulation. In the top right corner, I nail a metal hasp and secure it immediately with a wooden peg. In the bottom left corner, a woman’s stocking filled with crumbled tinfoil, clothes pegs and largish pieces of broken glass, will cause you to promptly leave the tactile portrait of Eva Švankmajerová with the feeling that you have sustained an injury. 1976

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 134

6/03/2014 10:06 am

108. Tactile Portrait of Eva Švankmajerová, 1977

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 135

6/03/2014 10:06 am

136

Touching and Imagining

Tactile portrait of Vratislav Effenberger, 1978 If anyone ever hesitated in front of the elbow sleeve of a tactile object, then this feeling of shame, fear and tension is here multiplied a hundred times and only forced, liberating laughter will free us enough to be able to insert our hand into Vrastislav Effenberger. That proposition is correct, since the purpose of my tactile portraits is not to engender the feeling of a darkened room full of friends, on the contrary it is an attempt to touch the inner structures and aspects of the portrayed on a bright day, with eyes wide open. The hand that awaits us inside only seems ready for a handshake, it is really another one of my tricks to entice the ‘spectator’ into a trap, to pacify him and take the weight off his shoulders. When you find out that the hand doesn’t respond to you but just lies coldly in your palm, doesn’t beckon to you to sit yourself down comfortably, it is too late, because the contact with the object has been established and to back out would be embarrassing. This feeling of frustration is precisely the right feeling from which to perceive the Portrait of Vratislav Effenberger. The space of the portrait is defined on its sides by a cold grater whose surface doesn’t allow too close a proximity to the outer edges for fear of injury. This rough surface is one of the positions available to the portrait. Under the limp hand, your fingers will rest on a soft surface of a ‘cheesecloth’ structure that will rebound as you put pressure on it. This absorbent surface that creates a counterpoint to the side graters, a ‘bandage’ for possible injuries suffered while examining the portrait, is of course only a camouflage. Under the bandage you will find further graters that should come into effect if the side traps fail. Now, your fingers, in hope of escape, descend into the ‘mouth’ of the portrait where they at least have something to get hold of, something to grab, which is quite a lot. Now you are holding it. Savour that feeling. You will very rarely experience such a feeling with the conventional art of portraiture. You will never be able to truly value this gift of tactilism, to grasp something and hold onto it. Such a gift should not be wasted. So hold on, for at least five minutes. It is encouraging. Grip the hand really hard, don’t be afraid – what you’re gripping is solid and can take it. After gripping for five minutes, you will comprehend the meaning of ‘German faithfulness’. Then, as you let go of this ‘pommel of faithfulness’, you will feel that you have decided your fate. Symmetrically arranged, artificial butterflies, will confirm this, the forms of your future life – pastries as butterflies. I have always been disturbed by the artificiality of nature (artificial stumps of my childhood years), this authentic non-authenticity of fallen mannerism. And the eyes – if a hand is a nose and a ‘pommel of faithfulness’ with forms of butterflies for a mouth, then keys hung on bathroom hooks are eyes. However, in tactile art the eyes are not the most important part of a portrait. Eyes defend themselves from touching by shutting their lids. They beg comparison: eyes as a key to the personality of the portrayed. Don’t believe it. Touch it, an ordinary key. Better return to the mouth. Stay five minutes more. It is not fitting for the author to advertise his own object but if you do want to touch your superego don’t hesitate to insert your hand into my tactile portrait of Vratislav Effenberger. 1978

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 136

6/03/2014 10:06 am

109. Tactile Portrait of Vratislav Effenberger (uncovered object), 1978

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 137

6/03/2014 10:06 am

110. Tactile Portrait of Ludvík Šváb, 1978

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 138

6/03/2014 10:06 am

inside

139

Tactile portrait of Ludvík Šváb One should not be fooled by the fact that at the first touch the tactile portrait of Ludvík Šváb retains some semblance of a real portrait. As if ‘something’ was eyes, ‘something’ nose, ‘something’ mouth. This confusing topography is meant to create a recognizable situation and to make the first impression bearable. The ornamental cushion-like structure of the portrait’s foundation, as the lowest layer of his secret wishes, forms the base of his alimentary tract, leading through the centre of the object. Maybe it is through this elastic tunnel that those frequent sorties into my dreams start. The thing that, in the first tactile impression, can be mistaken for a mouth because it is located where, in a portrait, we expect the mouth to be, is in reality that place in the spirit from where his precisely formulated aggressions emerge, so obviously inappropriate to his corpulent type. From this small jar originates bile distilled a hundred times and with a touch, as we might squeeze lemon into tea, remnants of dried plaster peel off from the elastic inside of a halved children’s ball, to fall without announcement into their proper places. Only touch is capable of using an analogical shortcut to come close to this aggressive mechanism of humour. All the other things that you can touch in the object are structures and aspects of infantilism, as random witnesses to the process of touching Ludvík Šváb. Touchable Wellbeing, 1978 (Tactile poem) Slice two pieces of Christmas bun Change into boxer shorts Rub the bun on your naked thighs till it completely crumbles Collect the crumbs and put them into your wellies Pour some good table oil into the wellies Insert your naked feet into the wellies Walk to the nearest metro station (Concentrate on each step) Light a small fire in the underground Throw one hundred single crown coins into the fire Feed the fire with the oil and crumbs of the bun After quarter of an hour, stamp the fire out Throw the coins into an appropriate hole (Concentrate on the contact your fingers make with the warm metal) Enter Walk from carriage to carriage and with both hands Caress all clothes made of fur (Fur coats, fur collars, hats, shoes etc) Exit at Peace Square And face the wind 1978

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 139

6/03/2014 10:06 am

111. Tactile Quatrain, 1985

112. Tactile Interpretation of a poem by Benjamin Péret: ‘At the End of the World’, 1989

113. Interpretation of a poem by Vratislav Effenberger: ‘At Night’, 1989

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 140

6/03/2014 10:07 am

inside

141

114. Soft – Hard (tactile poem), 1988

Economical suicide, 1978 Dedicated to Eva Švankmajerová Spread your fingers as far apart as possible Place between them pea seeds Endure Pinch your nose shut with a clothes peg Endure Kneel down on a grater Endure Slip a sucking sweet into your mouth Suck Press your back against the smooth concrete of a laundry Endure Press your heels into the drain of the bath Just as the plug has been pulled Endure Paint your calves with egg yolk Let it dry And endure Run water into the basin Take shoes off Dip your face in water Endure

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 141

6/03/2014 10:07 am

115. Heraclitus’s Poem, 1988

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 142

6/03/2014 10:07 am

116. Tactile Poem, 1988

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 143

6/03/2014 10:07 am

117. Crushing of Walnuts in the Palm, 1990

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 144

6/03/2014 10:07 am

118. Tactile Poem, 1984

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 145

6/03/2014 10:07 am

119. Cunnilingus Game, 1980 120. Cunnilingus Game, 1980 The aim is to push the ball with the tongue into the hairy hollow as fast as possible.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 146

6/03/2014 10:07 am

121. Utilitarianism under Encirclement, 1989

122. Tactile Poem, 1990

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 147

6/03/2014 10:07 am

123. Vacations (gesture poem), 1983

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 148

6/03/2014 10:07 am

inside

149

Gestural sculpture Unlike the gesture painting here, the impression of the gesture is not made by means of an instrument (brush or scraper) and in its emotional expression it is a pure statement of the creator’s psychic state. Gesture, an expression of our emotions, is transposed by its impression into a fossilized form without losing its authenticity through some aesthetic transformation. So it is a kind of fossilization of our emotions. It is a diary of our emotions. During the creation of a gesture sculpture, there should be a discharge of accumulated tensions. Gestural sculpture is a pure form of tactile art, since the hand does not combine or search out analogical structures that would best correspond to our feelings, but creates these structures directly, by not investing them with any intermediate emotions. It abolishes the exterior and the interior model; subject and object do not find any place for antagonism. In perceiving a gesture sculpture, it is important not to rely on sight, because sight immediately makes aesthetic judgements and seeks out random shapes of the sculpture for ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes’. It is better to perceive with touch, which in this case is more competent. The perceiver is then forced to perceive the sculpture not as an artefact, but instead allow himself/herself to be affected by the immediate emotion of the author. If we are prepared to believe what the old, hermitic books try to persuade us of, then a strong emotion leaves an indelible imprint on the objects touched, that can in turn be passed onto sensitive persons and even allow them to visualize it. An analogical contact should be possible between the author of the gesture sculpture and its perceiver. The tension existing at the time of the making should, through touching (impassioned by a gesture identical with the author), pass into the psyche of the perceiver and arouse visual associations. The whole process of perception should take place in our inner vision, which is still the domain of our psyche and is not subservient to aesthetic conventions. 1979

124. Three Gestures of Anger, 1979

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 149

6/03/2014 10:07 am

125. Destructive Gesture I, 1990

126. Destructive Gesture II, 1990

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 150

6/03/2014 10:07 am

127. Animated Gesture, 1990

In my own film The Fall of the House of Usher (1980), inspired by the story by Edgar Allen Poe, I used the technique of tactile gesture pressed into clay for part of the story, the interpretation of the poem ‘Magic Castle’. The poem analogically expresses the spiritual change of Usher’s state. It is a poem that evokes the beginning of insanity. It demonstrates that Usher subconsciously feels what is happening to him but is unable to face it. This is why the poem has such an important role in the story and in my conception of the film. It is an analogy of an analogy. While animating this sequence of the film I attempted a kind of ‘tense interpretation’ of the poem. It was doubly hard, as the gesture calling for tension all the time had to be held back by animation techniques, it could not be done in one go, in one free action. On the other hand, applying a brake on the tension amplified these emotions, they became cumulative, even leading to cramping of the fingers. That piece of animation led to a considerable mental exhaustion.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 151

6/03/2014 10:07 am

128. The Fall of the House of Usher, 1980

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 152

6/03/2014 10:07 am

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 153

6/03/2014 10:07 am

154

Touching and Imagining

129. Scene from the Film Dimensions of Dialogue, 1982

Like the Touch of a Dead Trout, 1978 Tactile poem – scenario Medium shot – A duvet is billowing, tossing about, rolling over. Close up – A finger runs across the teeth of a comb. Long shot – The duvet is calming down, until it becomes lifeless. Medium shot – A tabletop. On the table lies a slice of bread. Pieces of bread break off, mould themselves into balls and start rolling around. Close up – A human nose seen from below. Balls of bread roll into the nostrils and disappear up them. Close up – A human ear. Balls of bread roll into the ear and disappear into it. Long shot – A bare back: cool supple slippery slimy Running naked in ripe barley! Long shot – The duvet covers the bare back. It moves like an animal devouring and digesting the body. Close up – Teeth being cleaned. The movement of the brush speeds up: slightly sticky against the direction of the hair pleasantly unretainable pliable Chew off the nails of both index fingers! Long shot – A heap of dresses chafing against each other, climbing over each other, they buttoning and unbuttoning themselves, etc. A montage: Close up – An armpit covered with soft hair: lumpy disintegrating injuring masticated Sweat between the toes! Long shot – The duvet climbs off the bed exposing the bed sheet full of cake crumbs.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 154

6/03/2014 10:07 am

inside

155

Touch and humour If we only paid attention to the physiological aspect of this subject then tactile humour would merge with tickling. But humour is, above all, a psychological phenomenon and from that perspective the same rules should apply to tactile humour as they do to poetry, painting, and such. This means that tactile arousal has to touch not just our skin but firstly our ‘psyche’, if we want to regard it as true tactile humour. Certain characteristics ensue from the visualization of tactile arousal. Such visualization, the basis of tactile imagination, is also a prerequisite of tactile humour. Without it, the tactile excitement would stay on the level of a pleasant or unbearable physiological impulse. From the history of ‘tactile humour’ I would like to single out Duchamp’s Please Touch and Dalí’s painting of tactile cinema. Programme of the first collective, public contactorama on the theme: ‘Touch and Humour’ (First introductory verse), 1984 Purging lobby The participants undress above the waist, take off their shoes. The lobby is equipped with: 1) Feather brushes. There are objects fixed to the walls made of goose and duck feathers. Some of them are controlled from the back by simple mechanisms that give them a certain movement (circular, vertical or horizontal). The participants approach these objects delicately, frontally or with their backs, and allow themselves to be tickled by the moving feathers, eventually responding to them with movements of their bodies. 2) Underarm twirling sticks. Ordinary wooden kitchen twirling sticks, covered with lambskins and horsehair that can be rotated around their axles. These sticks project from the wall and enable the ‘participants’ to position themselves so that the ends of the sticks twirl in their armpits. 3) Tickling mats. These mats will be made from latex fingers (in the shape of a tickling index finger). The participants will walk along the carpet to the door leading to the ‘Hallway of Quips’. During the walk, a soundtrack of lewd jokes will be played. Sharp, metal spikes will outline the way on both sides so that they will have to pay attention to avoid injury. The path will commence from a fur rug and wind its way along the lobby around several bends, ending on the threshold (also covered with fur) of the ‘Hallway of Quips’. The entrance into the hall will have no door. Instead, large foam rubber buffers will fill the doorframe and the ‘participant’ will have to push through these into the hallway. 4) Hallway of quips. The walls of the hallway will be reserved for the results of the interpretative games dedicated to tactile interpretation of verbal and drawn jokes. Games workshop From the ‘Hall of Quips’ one enters the ‘The Games Workshop’ where there will be a collective tactile game prepared on the theme ‘A Peaceful Life is a Happy Life’. Rules of the game: The participants divide into four groups: Mechanics fishing Women at home Managers of brickworks Coal merchants

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 155

6/03/2014 10:07 am

156

Touching and Imagining

1) Mechanics fishing First they put their bare feet into a hot oven (carefully, so that they don’t burn themselves on the walls) then they allow their toes to be sucked by hungry carp in a tub of water. 2) Women at home They throw flour over each other, then clean themselves up with a vacuum cleaner. 3) Managers of brickworks First they tread in ordinary mud with their bare feet (maybe in a wash basin) then they stand on warm bricks (heated from below by electrical elements) and remain standing till the remnants of the mud on their feet dry. 4) Coal merchants From out of a heap of coke they pick out piece after piece and rub the back of their necks with it. Then they beat themselves with the skin (turned inside out) of a freshly skinned rabbit Later, the activities are switched around so that, for instance, Women at home, after the flour activity, let themselves be beaten with the rabbit skin, or Managers of the brickworks, after they have trodden the mud, are cleaned up with a vacuum cleaner, etc. While this is going on a soundtrack is being played: ‘Blue, blue, bites pricks, pricks, red raining, raining, green sliding, brown, brown’ And the sound of branches breaking.

130. Puppet of a Woman, 1996

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 156

131. Puppet of a Man, 1996

6/03/2014 10:07 am

inside

157

Exit of gestures From the ‘Games Workshop’ the participants will go to a small room where around the walls is a long counter with small piles of potting clay. Above each pile hangs a piece of paper with some joke or anecdote. Each participant puts a hand or both hands on the pile and starts reading. At the point of climax the participant grips the clay with the fingers. Thereby a gesture print of the laughter will be created. They then take a step to the next pile of clay and repeat the action. Everyone circulates around the whole room till they all reach the exit.

132. Gesture Marionette, 1990

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 157

6/03/2014 10:07 am

133. Siamese Triplets (marionette), 1990

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 158

6/03/2014 10:07 am

134. Gesture Marionette, 1990

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 159

6/03/2014 10:07 am

160

Touching and Imagining

In the Pocket, 1982 Tactile play in one act Characters: Bernard Gunther Unhappy Pile of Flesh Sex Maniac Victim Art Historian Choir (four men) Set: A monstrously large tactile object covers the whole back of the stage. It is hidden by a black elbow sleeve with its opening closed by a rubber band. During the performance the spectators crawl, one after another, through the hole into the object to physically acquaint themselves with the tactile scenery. Theatre programme: There are eight pages. The first has rabbit fur glued to it, the second fine sand, the third rough bagging, the fourth has various buttons sewn onto it, the fifth has a plastic bag affixed containing equal volume of drawing pins and feathers, the sixth is made of tin, the seventh is a bath sponge and the eighth has velvet glued on one half and last year’s peas on the other. Above the scenographic object is a light table where numbers will be projected during certain scenes, indicating to the audience which page of the programme they should be touching. Mid stage stands the Unhappy Pile of Flesh. It is complaining. The black cloth covering a tactile object up-stage starts to wave a little. The hole with the rubber band pulsates. It opens and closes like a mouth, as if it was declaring some silent message. Suddenly it seems to be choking and throws up Bernard Gunther. Gunther: (who is naked, wears a white bed sheet so that only his legs from the knees down are showing): It’s not possible that you don’t know it, you’ve just forgotten it. You carry it inside you like an unsatisfied desire. (He walks around the stage with outstretched hands, groping his way.) After all, the tactile sense is the first sense which an infant, when born, feels – the touch of the mother’s body. That can’t be so easily forgotten, as if it never existed. It is always with us, it remains with us all our lives. We need to sense it again, to live it, maybe only as a memory and we’ll be happy, healthy, the whole civilization will become well. We will be happy, happy again. (He touches the Unhappy Pile of Flesh that shudders under his touch and shakes itself.) Unhappy Pile of Flesh: In spite of being only an abstract model or symbol, if you wish, I am very ticklish. Please, don’t touch me. What’s more, strangers repulse me. And I don’t know you. Gunther: No need to be afraid of me. I am a doctor, a therapist. I’ll cure you, you’ll be as happy as a child. Besides, ticklishness and repulsion are the two greatest curses of humankind. We are organisms comprised of organs. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin: five sensory organs. Little children perceive vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch directly, without any preferences. We lead them to the domination of vision. Under our influence they dominate their organism. To see is to believe, to look after one’s own;

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 160

6/03/2014 10:07 am

inside

161

great men are visionaries. When we part from someone we say: ‘See you later!’ Never ‘We’ll touch, taste, smell each other later.’ You see what I mean? Choir: (recite together as they brush their hair): Manginess, mouldiness, faeces, urine, milk skin, snake, slimy, hollow cavity, rat, hairless dog belly, boiled onions, rotting peas, Christmas carp in the bath, vomit and so on. Gunther: I’ll just knock on your forehead with my fingers. Don’t be afraid, they are quite sterile. Knocking and slapping stimulates the nerves, increases blood circulation, opens up every part of the body to become more sensitive. Follow me! I’ll bend my fingers at the knuckles and I’ll knock with a movement like jumping up and down, I’ll lift my fingers up one to two centimetres high. I’ll use both hands, I won’t be too hard, but I won’t be too gentle. When I finish knocking, that part of the body will feel slightly hot. Unhappy Pile of Flesh: I have no forehead. I’m shapeless, rugged, an Unhappy Pile of Flesh. Gunther: Try, concentrate, relax, everyone has a forehead. Unhappy Pile of Flesh: In my infanthood they threw me away, didn’t tell me how I should grow. I’m an infantile, Unhappy Pile of Flesh. Choir: (All pick up a piece of sand paper and rub their foreheads till they bleed, making pleasurable noises.) On the light table the number ‘one’ appears (fur). While Gunther is helping Unhappy Pile of Flesh to find its forehead, out of the sleeve of the tactile object climbs Sex Maniac, followed by Victim. Sex Maniac: Once, purely by accident, something fell into my eye. I rubbed the eye desperately. Suddenly, an immense pleasure overtook me, I continued rubbing the eye but the irritation slowly changed until it reached a plateau where the pleasure didn’t stop but increased till a liberating flow of tears washed away the irritation and the orgasm ended. Victim: More! Sex Maniac: Of course, I don’t rely on chance. Recently I stood naked on an anthill and with my own urine washed down the ants attempting to climb up me. Victim: More! Sex Maniac: All insects can be a source of unexpected delights. Come springtime, on the first sunny days I lie down on fresh new grass. Naked. I cover myself with grass. All over. Only my erect penis rises up from the ocean of greenery. My penis is smeared with a thin layer of honey. Then, impatiently, I wait for the first bee to fly by. Then another and another one and more. And I try to hold back the coming ejaculation so as not to frighten the poor things starving after the long winter. Victim: (agitatedly): Never again will I allow myself to be de-flead. Choir: (One of the men from the choir stands up, blindfolded; the others approach him, slap his face, kick him, tear out his hair, punch him in various places. After each blow he calls out some colour: red-yellow, olive, Van Dyck brown, ash, white, etc.) With each blow another number comes up on the light table: 5, 8, 2, 1, 6, etc. (plastic bag with drawing pins and feathers, velvet and peas, sand, fur, tin). Gunther keeps examining Unhappy Pile of Flesh and pokes into it here and there, slaps it, but only very timidly.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 161

6/03/2014 10:07 am

162

Touching and Imagining

Unhappy Pile of Flesh: I feel nothing, absolutely nothing. It’s no better, the depression goes on, it gets deeper and deeper. Gunther: It’s only the beginning. Do you want to borrow my bed sheet? Sex Maniac: (dreamily): Yes, the bed sheet. I remember, it was in ’73. Couldn’t go to sleep, I kept turning over in bed, crumpling up the sheet till it crumpled into a ball which I then kicked somewhere under my hips. That’s when it happened. A wave of delight overtook my whole body. The folds of the crumpled up bed sheet found a new, until then unknown, erogenous zone on my body. A space to the left of my coccyx, two-by-two centimetres. About the size of a five-crown piece. Victim: My friend Dr Zemek, a sex therapist, told me once that he was treating a patient with a peculiar aberration who, while he was masturbating, was hallucinating about a male wrist strapped in a leather belt. Sex Maniac: (scornfully) Masturbation, how primitive! Unhappy Pile of Flesh: Can I call you Gunther? Gunther: If you like, but my first name is Bernard. Choir: (Throw fistfuls of flour at each other, then rice, peas, then they progress to throwing of pieces of crusty old bread and finally stones at each other.) The light table shows numbers 3, 4, 6, 7, and 1 (rough bagging, buttons, tin, bath sponge, fur). Gunther: At a certain time we stop touching our children, we even teach them to keep their own hands off, to stop exploring even themselves. Under our tutorship they learn to stay away from others, to keep their distance. Quickly shake the hand and prevent a real contact. Sex Maniac: I never developed a liking for children. Gunther: Sex is the only opportunity where we can touch each other. Sex Maniac: That’s overdoing it. Unhappy Pile of Flesh: Beat me, Bernard, please, beat me! I don’t deserve anything else. Gunther: Is it strange that we are tense? That we suffer from anxiety, that we are estranged? That, because we don’t touch our own bodies, we are disintegrated, disorganized? That we need to regain our equilibrium? Even small monkeys who lack physical contact with their mothers’ body suffer from autism. Sex Maniac: Man doesn’t have to try everything. Gunther: (to Unhappy Pile of Flesh): Come on, we’ll start again. We won’t keep looking for the forehead. (Starts knocking on the Unhappy Pile of Flesh’s body folds.) Choir: (Tickle each other on the soles of their feet while quietly relating lewd anecdotes to each other.) On the light table appears number 7 (bath sponge) and after about 30 seconds number 3 (rough bagging). The hole in the black sleeve of the tactile object opens up and out comes Art Historian. Art Historian: Even Epicurus was already interested in touch. Wrote a whole book about it. Unfortunately it hasn’t been preserved. Christianity can credit its world-wide growth to the latent tactilism of masochistic provenance. All those martyrs . . .  Unhappy Pile of Flesh: Push, Bernard, hit harder (turns to Art Historian) and you, continue!

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 162

6/03/2014 10:07 am

inside

163

On the light table number 5 lights up (plastic bag with drawing pins and feathers) and alternates in regular intervals with number 8 (velvet and peas). Art Historian: Earlier religions were based on the sadistic components of the human psyche. The masochistic component was frustrated. This fault was cleared away by Christianity; at least initially so. And so this bliss, repressed for long centuries, finally found its master. Unhappy Pile of Flesh: (agitatedly, to Gunther): Be my master. Choir: (One of the choir men is cradled in the arms of the other three. They sing a lullaby to him, giving him sleeping tablets. As soon as he is asleep, they put him on the ground and one of them hits him hard on the head with a stick. They are all over him and keep asking him to tell them what he dreamt about. But the abused man keeps crying.) On the light table appears number 6 (tin). Sex Maniac: As a pre-school child I contracted scarlet fever. I will never forget the delight of peeling skin from my body. Victim: Teach it to me! Or do you know what? We’ll fuck! Choir: (They are applying camomile poultice to the head of the man who was hit but the wound keeps bleeding. They then proceed to apply poultices to their own bodies and mutually discuss where to put them, where would be most emotive.) On the light table appears number 2 (sand). Art Historian: All those martyrs . . . However, I don’t believe that tactile art has any future. How many great men of modern art have tried to stir it up: Apollinaire, Marinetti, Duchamp and all in vain. The purpose of art is beauty. Tactile beauty is nonsense. A beautiful dig in the back, fingertips rubbed by sand paper! Moreover, it’s unhygienic. And money comes only to those who are fastidious about cleanliness. Gunther: Arousal of the senses is one method of returning to relaxed thinking, to easing chronic tension, to strengthening our direct sensory reality here and now: Take an orange, for instance, examine its shape and colour, its upper and lower parts, any marks on its skin. Smell it. Close your eyes and roll the orange in your hands, listen to the sound it creates. Roll the orange against your face. Note how, where and what your face feels. Open your eyes and look at the orange. (Takes out a pocketknife.) Cut the skin into thin sections. Examine the juice coming out of the skin. Unhappy Pile of Flesh: Yes. Gunther: (continues): Gently peel off the skin. Listen to the sounds, observe the peeling of the skin. Observe if it is possible to peel the skin in large pieces, and if so, does it tear out the flesh from the orange. Unhappy Pile of Flesh: I’m already feeling better. Gunther: (continues): Concentrate for a while on the sounds. Look inside the peel and smell it. Unhappy Pile of Flesh: I’m starting to feel happy. Gunther: Examine one of the orange sections. As slowly as possible, break the peeled orange into halves while observing the halving. Slowly separate into small sections. (He opens the knife.) Choir: (all rub each other’s back with scrubbing brushes and recite together):

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 163

6/03/2014 10:07 am

164

Touching and Imagining

Something hard, heavy, unliftable like scales of a snake like stinging by nettles. Sex Maniac: (dreamily): To shove a pinecone into the arse! On the light table appears number 4 (buttons). Art Historian: (to himself ): No, that won’t take root. Gunther: Close your eyes and eat (angrily attacks the Unhappy Pile of Flesh with the knife). Unhappy Pile of Flesh: (Screams with pleasure.) End

S Problems with the distribution of tactile art Touch has not gone through a long cultivated development the way Vision has, and so the manner of communication with a tactile object is altogether different from that with a painting or sculpture; for that reason the form of an exhibition is not quite satisfactory. For instance, a tactile perceiver needs more time to examine an object than does a viewer at a conventional exhibition of paintings. Additionally, he needs absolute, uninterrupted relaxation, a kind of freeing of introspection, sharpening of the inner eye. Each perceiver will need, at least initially, as we are dealing with an unusual form of communication with art, a new kind of preparation of Touch for arousal, so that the perceiver will become receptive to tactile messages. It is not possible for more than one person at a time to be occupied with one object. Some objects are designed to be in contact with parts of the body other than hands, so it is not reasonable to expect the visitors to disrobe in the presence of others. Still other tactile works are comprised of instructions for tactile behaviour and demand a specific atmosphere that may not be possible to arrange in an exhibition hall. One of the ways of bringing tactile art close to its audience could certainly be through collective contactivity, as suggested previously by Marinetti, where under the guidance of a tactilator, tactile rites or games could be arranged in which a number of people could take part. Similar collective séances, of therapeutic benefit, are also described by Bernard Gunther in his book Sense Relaxation. Another method of distribution could be some kind of lending institutions of tactile poesy (poetry), where for a modest fee one could borrow and take home some tactile plates, objects or collages and devote an evening to individual tactilation. When we consider the undemanding nature of producing tactile objects and collages, where no great quality of artistic calligraphy or craftsmanship is required, merely good trade qualifications, it seems to us that their reproduction would not be inaccessible to many people, therefore duplication of tactile objects by hand would make possible even private tactile collections, tactilographies. 1979

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 164

6/03/2014 10:07 am

inside

165

135. Please Touch (homage to Marcel Duchamp), 1989

The magic ritual of tactile initiation Isolate the novice in a dark chamber His hands must be submerged for a whole week in black ichthyol ointment Cover his back alternately with compresses of finely chopped nettles or goose fat The sole of his left foot touches the surface of hot water The sole of his right foot touches the surface of icy water After three days the water is swapped around A fan blows a gentle warm breeze in his face His penis is inserted into a rolled up emery paper and bandaged His kneecaps are gently tapped with a golden hammer Thrice daily an appropriate dose of mescaline is injected into his left arm After a week of such preliminaries the initiate is taken to the Great Tattooist who will tattoo a large image of the initiate’s thumb on his back while intoning: Make the cold warm and the soft hard! Make the loose compact! Make the course slimy! Make the hurtful pleasurable! And vice-versa! So that the eye will not perceive and give touch timely warning, constantly confuse his utilitarian habits of touch by disorientation, mystification and panic! Bear in mind that our entire body is a unified erogenous zone! Do not smooth down the crumpled sheets! In winter kick off the bedclothes! On hot summer nights crawl under the heavy quilt! Do not scorn masturbation! Do not have your old shoes re-soled! Do not urinate before going to bed! Be repulsed by all objects yet touch them all! Learn to love insects! Tire yourself out! Only when Touch is freed from its utilitarian context, not constantly forced into a self-conscious moment, will it reach the point where it transmutes the barrier of its identifying existence, and without being aware of it, becomes the language of the poet.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 165

6/03/2014 10:07 am

166

Touching and Imagining

136. Dactyloscopy of Desire (tactile homage to René Magritte), 1989

And now go and make tactile art!

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 166

6/03/2014 10:07 am

AFTERWORD TACTILISM REVIEWED

137. Tactile Novel, 2003

When I made my first tactile object back in 1974, as a basis for the collective interpretative game Restorer with the Surrealist Group, it never occurred to me what a chasm I was opening into my sensory life. Today, over thirty years later, I feel compelled to make some kind of a review of these experiments. Firstly: it turned out that tactile memory exists. This was made evident not only from the questionnaire about revulsion but also from a number of collective games that revealed clear childhood tactile memories. Even though it could be expected that

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 167

6/03/2014 10:07 am

168

Touching and Imagining

something like tactile memory existed, it had to be proved; without tactile memory, tactile art was not possible. Vratislav Effenberger: ‘If I remember correctly, the only concrete tactile repulsion I experienced was towards fish, namely the Christmas carp kept in the bath. In my childhood I was tempted to overcome the repulsion and touch that stupid creature, immobile against the side of the bath, with a snout that every now and then opened lazily, as if shouting some pathetic curse. Its slimy immobility was just pretence, it took only the slightest touch with my hand and the whole carp body leapt into action with lightning speed, showing it was capable of the angriest desperation. In a second, the repulsion to touch the slimy thing was overtaken by terror and panic and prevented any further aggression towards that dangerous monster.’ Emila Medková: ‘An experience from the age of eight: A girl of the same age as myself, living in the basement of our apartment block, invited me to her home. She let me stand outside the door and when, after a while, she returned, we went to play outside. She asked me to reach into her pocket, said that there was something very good there. I felt some vague substance in there that immediately stuck to my fingers and smelled repulsive. The girl told me to taste it, that it was some very good peas. I trembled with repulsion, my stomach was heaving, I ran home to wash it all off. This one occasion of contact with peas resulted in many years of repulsion to them in any form.’ Obviously, it was about the discovery of the relationship of touch to other senses, about its synaesthetic potential. In this instance, the results are not so clear-cut and leave lots of room for experimentation. In practice, the connection between vision and touch is quite evident, however this connection is not derived from analogy, as for instance in case of synaesthetic ‘colourful music’. The relationships of touch–smell or touch–taste are totally unexamined. Likewise touch–hearing, even though this connection is probably more common, chiefly through the medium of dance. All of this experimentation is challenged by a lack of expressions to describe authentic tactile feelings. Tactile vocabulary is uncommonly poor: wet–dry, heavy–light, rough–smooth, firm–loose, hot–cold, and that’s about it. If a little more complex description of bodily sensations is required, one cannot do without poetic analogy. On the other hand, this communicative scarcity encourages tactile poetry. Synaesthetic week Leather Monday, with bad breath, blue as the sky or the ocean, one hand in the pocket and the other, a finger moistened with saliva, up in the air testing the wind’s direction. From the nostrils hang two strings impregnated with linseed oil. A dog’s barking in the distance blends into the sound of a machine gun. Monday is hungry. Feed it. Cuddly Tuesday, wearing running shoes, shyly painting itself with yellow paint. Starts with the hair and systematically works its way down to the feet. Lastly it paints the toenails. All the while farting terribly. From the radio comes non-descript music. Goulash is burning on the stove. Ephemeral Wednesday, lying on the freshly cowhide-covered sofa. From the kitchen comes the sound of clanking crockery. Whites of the eyes are reddish. Red anger. Lips held together with a clothes peg. Wet dogs are running around the room smelling like steamed hats.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 168

6/03/2014 10:07 am

tactilism reviewed

169

Starched Thursday, stuffing itself with plum dumplings. Death on the tongue. Large milk cans are banging together so loudly that one cannot hear the beating of one’s own heart. Runny nose, thanks to a cold. Can’t see through the contact lenses. Windows have opaque glass in them. Hot glue poured on the left hand. It is a meat-less day. Hairy Friday, punished by standing in the corner facing the wall. Wetted itself. Dark brown rivulets of urine running down its legs, sprinkling face-powder on them. Ears covered with earphones with running water in them. Outside, the smell of spring. Postmen wearing just shirts are delivering letters. Restaurants are serving fried cheese and French fries with tartare sauce. Only the purple–orange-striped Vltava River strikes a discordant note. Pulse Saturday, vomiting on the pianola. But vomiting so cleverly that it’s hitting only the black keys. The falling muck produces the melody of a Viennese waltz. Outside, under the windows, striking unionists are demonstrating. Purple ink is seeping from under the toilet door and spreading in the hallway. Staircase is full of mist and letterboxes overflowing with crushed garlic. Dark-green Sunday, has drawn curtains. Poked out the eyes with a knitting needle, didn’t want to see anyone. Doorbell is covered with a band-aid. Riding boots are filled with concrete. Only the refrigerator covered with green moss says that nothing is meant seriously. Will there be lunch again? There was one only a few minutes ago. From the cellar comes music of the Prague trombone players, and from the attic drifts down the aroma of drying thyme. Perhaps the greatest contribution of my experiments was the application of tactile imagination in film. It facilitated the transfer from one sphere of sensations to another. In this instance it was the transfer from visual perception to the sphere of touch (physical sensation). That, without any doubt, is the function of tactile memory. The first time I used this arranged tactile imagination was in the film The Fall of the House of Usher (1980). I am referring to a sequence with animated clay, a poetic analogy evoking the start of Usher’s madness. The poem is a significant factor in Poe’s story. Simply put, I had to visualize the principle of fingerprinted gesture, something that I had used in my sculpting; a gesture, charged with certain emotion, has to be printed into clay, thereby the emotion is fixed. In film, the making of such an act of discharging of tension is constantly slowed down by an animation technique – that is, a gradual frame-by-frame exposure. Even though this kind of animation can be relatively quick, there are at least a few seconds between the frames. It leads to a kind of slowing down of emotions – the contact of fingers with clay is constantly interrupted. It resulted in tactile frustration, a kind of constant coitus interruptus. However, this tactile frustration also led to an intensifying of emotions and inflammation of physical senses. I used a similar technique in my film Dimensions of Dialogue (1983) in the episode ‘Passionate Dialogue’ in which I achieved the metamorphosis between the lovers with destructive gestures into the modelling clay. Here it was not merely gestures into shapeless clay, as in The Fall of the House of Usher, but using the gestures to metamorphose whole figures. The gesture was not just a messenger of analogical poetic emotion but also the means of tactile metamorphosis. In the film The Pendulum, The Pit and Hope (1983), tactilism was actually a kind of central character; the development was made up by using the point of view of the camera instead of the real hero, showing only the hands and bare feet that map out and ‘touch’ the limited space of the cell and also show the possibility

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 169

6/03/2014 10:07 am

170

Touching and Imagining

of escape. Various torture instruments, above all the pendulum, evoke the feelings of ‘coming’ (nearing) pain. Torture as the extreme limit of tactilism. Tactile dream 6 July 2002 I am lying on my back on the grass under the large crown of a leafy tree. Pigs are running in the branches above me. They jump from branch to branch like monkeys. Eva arrives and informs me that the pigs belong to a tight-rope walker from Velký Osek who lives with Eva’s aunt. She makes a Victory sign with both hands then crosses the four fingers. I understand that the tight-rope walker fucks the aunt four times weekly. Now the tight-rope walker arrives and balances on the rope stretched on the grass. In each hand, he holds a window removed from its hinges. I say to myself that it’s easy, I could do it, too. Suddenly the rope starts to twist like a snake. Its two ends come together like Uroboros. The tight-rope walker now walks in a circle. Terrible squeals come from the crown of the tree. A branch broke under one of the large pigs and the whole lot is falling down on my face. The weight of the pig bears down on me as I try to get out somehow. I am beginning to choke. I wake up with a pillow over my face. During the night I took one of the pillows from under my head because it was uncomfortable, and put it against the wall behind me. The pillow fell over onto my face. Since the original publication of the book Hmat a Imaginace I had only two tactile dreams. It appears that such dreams are very rare unless deliberately (experimentally) evoked. Even this form of experimentation opens a huge field of possibilities. Tactile poetry

138. Tactile Poem, 2002

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 170

6/03/2014 10:07 am

tactilism reviewed

171

139. Tactile Poem, 2002

Here my experimentation is also lacking. Tactile poetry, be it obvious (structural, objective) or literal (evoking tactile feelings by mediation), has in itself many latent possibilities. In that field I would like to concentrate my own further experiments. Tactile blackout Finger in the nostril. Minor drizzle Pins and needles in the feet. Bad weather covers the mountain I am cold. My skin is shrinking, doesn’t cover my whole body Something scabby, lumpy, perhaps a field Something liquid, warm, perhaps blood Something stiff, sturdy, perhaps root No one will save anything Not even tactile Chomsky Buzzing ear Blind eye Lame arm Congested nose Tongue-tied There’s nothing to touch anymore Jan Švankmajer

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 171

6/03/2014 10:07 am

NOTES

PRELIMINARY PAGES

1 Hmat a Imaginace was eventually published in 1994 (Prague: Kozoroh). 2 ‘Jan Švankmajer in Conversation with Gerald A. Matt’, in Ursula Blickle and Gerald A. Matt (eds), The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer, (German/English), Vienna: Ursula-Blickle-Stiftung and Kunsthalle, 2011: 185–86. 3 Two fragments from Hmat a Imaginace have been published, translated into English by Gaby Dowdell: ‘Like the Touch of a Dead Trout’, and ‘The Magic Ritual of Tactile Inauguration’, Afterimage 13, Autumn 1987: 40–1 and 42–3. These and some other translated fragments were included in the edition of Hmat a Imaginace which Švankmajer published in 1994. ‘Gestural Sculpture’ is included in František Dryje, ‘The Force of Imagination’, translated by Valerie Mason, in Peter Hames (ed.), The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer: Dark Alchemy, London: Wallflower Press, 2008: 163–64. At the time I asked Stanley Dalby if he would translate Hmat a Imaginace, I was working on an essay about Švankmajer’s tactile art (relying on just these few fragments), which I was able to complete with the help of his translation (‘The Švankmajer Touch’, Animation Studies, special issue: Animated Dialogues (2007), posted 19 July, 2009: 91–101; and ‘Tactile Animation: Haptic Devices and the Švankmajer Touch’, The Senses and Society 4, 2 July 2009: 141–162). 4 Jan Švankmajer, ‘Tactilní Bilance’, Analogon 38/39, 2003: 27–29; Evašvankmajerjan (Eva Švankmajerová and Jan Švankmajer), Anima, Animus, Animace, Prague: Slovart Publishers, Ltd and Arbor Vitae – Foundation for Literature and Visual Arts, 1998: 85. 5 Eva Švankmajerová, ‘Dotek’, in Jan Švankmajer, Transmutace Smyslů-Transmutation of the Senses (1994), (bilingual) second edition, S. Hošková, K. Otcovská and O. Fridlová (eds), Prague: Pražská/Metrostav, 2004: 66. 6 Vradislav Effenberger, Transmutace Smyslů – Transmutation of the Senses: 67.

1. INTRODUCTION

1 F. X. Šalda, ‘Hrdinný Zrak’ [‘Heroic Vision’], Volné Směry [Free Directions] 6, 1901–2: 71–73.

2. BETWEEN UTILITARIANISM AND IMAGINATION

1 Karel Teige, ‘Poesie pro Pět Smyslů čili Druhý Manifest Poetismu,’ Svět který Voní [The World that Smells], Prague: Jan Fromek, Edition Odeon, 1930–31. [Omitted page numbers indicate they are not stated in Hmat a Imaginace. Where the edition of a book is also unknown the original edition is cited.]

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 172

6/03/2014 10:07 am

notes

173

2

Coding to letters and numerals is really a quite pedestrian way of getting meanings into tactile patterns. There are, to be sure, obvious ways of making such a system ‘fly’ at a faster rate. One way would be to code the vibratory signals to phonemes. We have not attempted it because of the prodigious investment entailed in learning the phonemes themselves, but it ought to be tried. It is also possible that there may be developed an entirely novel cutaneous shorthand, one capitalizing on distinctively tactile properties. Serious study of basic cutaneous perceptual phenomena, an area dignified by the devotion of not more than a dozen first-rate minds in the whole of recorded history, might turn up such a linguistic development. Frank A. Geldard, ‘Some Neglected Possibilities of Communication’, Science 131, 27 May 1960: 1583–1588. 3 Possibilities for cutaneous communication are by no means confined to conventional language, of course. Other kinds of information may be imparted tactilely. Rates, amounts, directions  –  anything falling on uni-dimensional or bi-dimensional continua – could presumably be communicated to the skin by way of suitably patterned mechanical impacts or sequences of them. One of these possibilities has already been exploited in our experiments. Vibratory tracking of the compensatory–pursuit variety has been carried out by lining up three vibrators across the chest, letting them be successively energized to give the impression of continuous movement in one direction or the other (through utilization of phi), such that the ‘arrowhead’ always ‘points to’ the target, and with the vibratory sequences temporally spaced to indicate degree of urgency in getting back ‘on target’. The subjects manipulated a steering wheel and attempted to eliminate all cutaneous signals by promptly neutralizing all off-target indications. Geldard, ‘Some Neglected Possibilities of Communication’: 1587. 4 Examples include: Face slapping: Close your eyes and experience your face. As your eyes remain closed begin slapping your forehead with your fingers. (Slap 15 seconds in each area.) The hands are held semi-flat and meet the face simultaneously so that there is no jarring. Now to the jaw. Slap vigorously there, using palms as well as fingers. Next over the cheeks with your fingers. Then the lips and chin. Go gently over the nose. Use just the fingertips over the eyelids. Then go over any part that seems to ask for more. Gently slap over the entire face again. Stop, lower your hands and experience the results. Rock Experience: Find a rock the size of your fist. Sit alone in a quiet place. Hold the rock in your hand. Look at the rock. See its shape, color, colors, the ridges and the indentations. Feel the weight of the rock. Toss it up and down in your hand. Turn it over and examine the other side. Feel the surface of the rock. Squeeze it and find out how hard it is. Close your eyes and rub the rock over your face. Experience its temperature, its texture. Allow the rock to settle gently over one of your eyelids. Hold it there for 30 seconds with the rock. Take the rock away. Put your lips against the rock. Let the rock rest anywhere on your face. Leave it there for from 30 seconds to one minute. Take the rock off and experience how you feel. Open your eyes and again see the rock. Under the Sheets: Prelude: Group Activities. Each person goes under a sheet and stays quiet for 5 minutes. They are allowed to do anything they want to, except to move around the room. Then move about the room, contact/encounter other people or groups as long as each stays under his own sheet. Be open to your desires and let whatever action-reaction that wants to happen occur. No talking during the experience. When it is over, experience how you feel; come out from under your sheet. Bernard Gunther, Sense Relaxation: Below Your Mind, New York: Collier Books, 1968: 31, 102, 104. 5 Richard Mennen, ‘Grotowski’s Paratheatrical Projects’, TDR/The Drama Review 19, 4, 1975: 58–69.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 173

6/03/2014 10:07 am

174

Touching and Imagining

3. RESTORER

1 L. L. Vasiliev, Professor of Neurophysiology at Leningrad University, discovered with N. S. Kulagin an ability of dermo-optical perception (reading and perceiving colours with a blindfold), a kind of tactile hyperaesthesia. Karel Drbal and Zdeněk Rejdák, Perspectivy Telepatie [Perspectives of Telepathy], Prague: Melantrich, 1970.

4. SOURCES OF TACTILE IMAGINATION

1 Franz Kafka, In der Strafkolonie, Leipzig: Kurt Wolff, 1919. 2 Stanislav Drvota, ‘Přípěvek k Problému tzv. Chronických Taktilních Halucinos’ [‘Contribution to the Problems of So-called Chronic Tactile Hallucinations’]. Prague: Universitas Carolina, Medica Vol. 3, 1957: 429–443. 3 In tactile hallucinations the patient experiences contact with various animals, most commonly insects or other small animals, existing only in the patient’s imagination. At other times the patient feels electrified, touched by cold fish, or that someone is obscenely touching the patient’s genitals and so on. Similarly, even such physical cenesthetic hallucinations often have sexual context. The patient feels the sensation of coitus or of pregnancy (even men); ‘being possessed by the devil’ also belongs in this category. With dysaesthesia [abnormal sensation] comes a metamorphosis of sensory stimuli. Cold is felt as warmth, tickling becomes pain, pinching becomes vibrations and similar. Diabetics are familiar with dysaesthesia when walking – they feel that they are walking ‘on a carpet’, ‘in the mud’, and so on. With paraesthesia tactile sensations are experienced without any perceived outside stimulus. The patient feels that hot water is being spilt over the body, and then cold water, or that a part of the body has suddenly seized up, or similar. Most interesting from my point of view are of course reflexive hallucinations, for their close relationship to synaesthesia. With one sense, the patient registers reality while at the same time, with another sense, a hallucination. Most frequently the visual is felt in a tactile sense. The hallucinator reflects activity which he sees, hears or perceives as if what is happening around him is being done to him. For instance: he sees a real knife and immediately feels pain, as if he was being cut by it, or he hears ringing of bells and sees a dead corpse in a coffin. Or he sees a cleaning woman scrubbing the floor and feels that she is scrubbing him, sees her wash and wring clothes and feels he is being washed and wrung, hears a sewing machine and feels that he is being sewn up, and so on. Similar states are possible to bring about by ingestion of mescalin. Dr V. Vondráček, Vnímání [Perception], Prague: Zdravotní Nakladatelství, 1949 and Dr Z. Mysliveček, Obecná Psychiatrie [General Psychiatry], Prague: Státní Zdravotnické Nakladatelství, 1959. 4 In addition to the main erogenous zones of children’s sexuality, the mouth and the anus, there are many others in childhood. Genital and total satisfaction at that age has already been dealt with. Lindner mentions several other pleasurable areas combined with thumb sucking. He mentions, for instance, that apart from genital stimulation thumb sucking is accompanied by rubbing of fingers, scratching of hair, Adam’s apple, ear lobes, nipples, navel, etc. He describes a case of the six-year-old son of a tobacconist who, while sucking his right thumb, was at the same time using the little finger of the same hand inside his nose causing blood to flow over his lips. Lindner also described a case of seven years old boy who sucked his thumb while irritating his nostrils and ear canals. This boy would regularly secrete a piece of bread under his pillow before going to bed. Piece by piece he chewed the bread and made small pieces to insert into his nostrils or ears until they were completely filled up. Only then was he able to go to sleep. Stimulation of various areas is often done quite independently. Children quite like to pick their nose or ears. Sometimes they introduce various articles into

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 174

6/03/2014 10:07 am

notes

175

these cavities, such as beans, marbles and so on, which often have to be surgically removed. Such activities are also the source of intimate amusement for some adults. The excitement accompanying such activities is evidence of their sexual character. Some adults retain from their childhood the pleasure of finger rubbing, with or without some object – bread, paper or even nose snot. Each of those normally secondary erogenous areas can be of primary significance to some individuals. Hirschfeld, for instance, relates a case of complete satisfaction reached by stimulation of the ear canal, and another one of the eye socket. Dobreyne, in ‘Moechiologie’ writes that some individuals reach orgasm by rubbing their chin. Another interesting case of onanism is described by Taylor: A woman of twenty-two attained satisfaction by moving her arms as if she was afflicted by St Vitus dance, and alternately pressing the nose point or the ear tragus with her middle finger. Sometimes the soles of the feet are also erogenous areas. The popularity of such stimulation in the middle ages is evidenced in the paintings of Silena and Faun, who tickle each other’s soles. In Russia, in the middle of the eighteenth century the Empress Anna Leopoldovna had six official female foot ticklers who, at the same time, related obscene stories or sang lewd songs to her. Important erogenous zones included the nipples; their stimulation was observed in animals of both sexes, even dogs or cats, as mentioned by Ch. Férer. Bohuslav Brouk, Autosexualismus a Psychoerotismus [Autosexualism and Psychoeroticism] Vol. I, Prague: Edice Surrealismu, 1935. 5 Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, London: John Murray, 1872: 257, 258. 6 Roger Caillois, Cohérences Aventureuses: Esthétique Généralisée, au Coeur du Fantastique, la Dissymétrie, Paris: Gallimard, 1976. 7 What was once a satisfaction to the subject is, indeed, bound to arouse his resistance or his disgust today. We are familiar with a trivial but instructive model of this change of mind. The same child who once eagerly sucked the milk from his mother’s breast is likely a few years later to display a strong dislike to drinking milk, which his upbringing has difficulties in overcoming. This dislike increases to disgust if a skin forms on the milk or the drink containing it. We cannot exclude the possibility, perhaps, that the skin conjures up a memory of the mother’s breast, once so ardently desired. Between the two situations, however, there lies the experience of weaning, with its traumatic effects. Sigmund Freud, ‘Lecture 23: The Paths to the Formation of Symptoms.’ The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (SE), edited by James Strachey, Vol. 15, London: Hogarth Press, 1953–1975: 366. 8 Záviš Kalandra, Skutečnost Snu. Unfinished manuscript. 9 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE, Vol. 4: 228–29. 10 André Breton, Les Vases Communicants (1932), Paris: Gallimard, 1955: 78–9. 11 Alfred Maury, Le Sommeil et les Rêves, Paris: Didier, 1861: 133–34. 12 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams: 229–30. 13 Robert Macnish, The Philosophy of Sleep, 1835. Cited by Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams: 25. 14 August Hennings, Regarding Dreams and Sleepwalkers, Weimar 1784: 258. Cited by Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams: 24. 15 Macnish, The Philosophy of Sleep, 1835. Cited by Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams: 24. 16 Alfred Maury, Le Sommeil et les Rêves. Cited by Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams: 25. [This is a selection chosen and renumbered by Švankmajer, from Freud’s list of Maury’s observations.] 17 Marquis d’Hervey – Saint Denis, author of anonymous work published in 1867 under the title Dreams and the Ways to Direct Them: Practical Observations.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 175

6/03/2014 10:07 am

176

Touching and Imagining 18 André Breton, Les Vases Communicants, 1955: 10. 19 Arthur Rimbaud, Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, a Bilingual Edition, translated by Wallace Fowlie (ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966: 121. (Reproduced with the permission of the University of Chicago Press. © 1966 by The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved.) 20 A. Hošek, Souvislost Barev a Tonů, 1928. Republished Prague: Galerie Hlavního Města Prahy, 1991. 21 Dr V. Forster, Okultní Úkazy a Jejich Psychologický Výklad, Prague: J. Otto, 1923. 22 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, Paris: Terre Humaine, Plon, 1984. 23 Charles Fourier, Le Nouveau Monde Industriel et Sociétaire; ou, Invention du Procédé d’Industrie Attrayante et Naturelle Distribuée en Séries Passionnées (1829). In Oeuvres Complètes de Charles Fourier, Vol. 6, Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1966. 24 Karel Tiege, Svět který Voní [The World that Smells].

5. SHORT ANTHOLOGY OF TACTILE ART

1 Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Illustrated Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, London: Chancellor Press, 1988: 254. (Originally published in Philadelphia: Graham’s Magazine, August 1841.) 2 Rachilde, La Jongleuse, Paris: Mercure de France, 1900. 3 A piece of wallpaper or newspaper does not pretend to be a wall or a journal lying on the table, but is merely a surface of specific colouring and specific tactile qualities, that are a part of a composed design and contrasts with other surfaces covered with layers of paint also often richly varied with brush work. Karel Teige, ‘Realism and Irrealism in Cubist Work’ (1951), in Karel Teige, Vývojové proměny v uměni [Developmental Changes in Art], Prague: Nakladatelství Československých Výtvarných Umělců, Edition Orientace, 1966. 4 Guillaume Apollinaire, ‘Hmatové Umění’ [‘Tactile Art’], in Guillaume Apollinaire, O Novém Umění [About New Art], Prague: Odeon, 1974. (‘Mon Cher Ludovik’ was first published in Almanach des Lettres et des Arts, Paris: Martine, Choses De La Mode, 1917 and ‘L’Art Tactile’ was first published in Mercure de France 125. 472, February 16, 1918: 751–53.) 5 F. T. Marinetti, ‘The Manifesto of Tactilism’, Milan: Comoedia, 11 January, 1921. 6 Karel Tiege, Svět který Voní [The World that Smells]. 7 Our sense of touch is well developed by civilization as to its deftness but is not aesthetically cultivated for impressionability. Quite often the visual sensations, when viewing substances of varying softness or roughness, arouse in us tactile notions, as against the mere touch in the darkness that does not stimulate us intensively. Karel Tiege, ‘Poetry for the Five Senses or The Second Manifesto of Poetism,’ in Svět který Voní [The World that Smells]. 8 Vítězlav Nezval, ‘Dekalkomanie’ (1937), Magnetická Pole, J. Tomeš (ed.), Prague 1967: 124–126. 9 Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942), translated by Haakon M. Chevalier, London: Vision, 1973: 290. 10 Claude Cahun, ‘Prenez garde aux objets domestiques!’, Cahiers d’art I-II, L’Objet, 1936. 11 I would characterize Surrealist anti-aestheticism as a function of freeing imagination from the enclave of artifice in order for imagination to enter into life and create greater possibilities for it.

6. INSIDE

1 Albert Camus, ‘Absurd freedom’, The Myth of Sisyphus, translated by Justin O’Brien, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1955: 51. (First published in Paris: Gallimard, 1942.)

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 176

6/03/2014 10:07 am

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Algelander, A (1927) Das Fabernhören und der Synäesthetiche Faktor dr Wahmehmung. n.p.: Jena. Apollinaire, Guillaume (1974) O Novém Umění [About New Art], Vladimir Divis (ed.) and Jitka Hazova (trans.). Prague: Odeon. Breton, André (1955) Les Vases Communicants (1932). Paris: Gallimard. Brouk, Bohuslav (1935) Autosexualismus a Psychoerotismus [Autosexualism and Psychoeroticism] Vol. I. Prague: Edice surrealismu. Caillois, Roger (1976) Cohérences Aventureuses: Esthétique Généralisée, au Coeur du Fantastique, la Dissymétrie. Paris: Gallimard. Camus, Albert (1955) The Myth of Sisyphus: Absurd Freedom, Justin O’Brien (trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Dalí, Salvador (1973) The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942), Haakon M. Chevalier (trans.). Fourth edition. London: Vision. Darwin, Charles R. (1872) The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. First edition. London: John Murray. Drbal, Karel and Rejdák, Zdeněk (1970) Perspectivy Telepatie [Perspectives of Telepathy]. Prague: Melantrich. Drvota, Stanislav (1957) ‘Přípěvek k Problému tzv. Chronických Taktilních Halucinos’ [‘Contribution to the Problems of So-Called Chronic Tactile Hallucinations’]. Prague: Universitas Carolina, Medica, Vol. 3: 429–443. Dryje, František (2008) ‘The Force of Imagination’, Valerie Mason (trans.). In Peter Hames (ed.), The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer: Dark Alchemy. Second edition. London: Wallflower Press. Forster, V. (1923) Okultní Úkazy a Jejich Psychologický Výklad [Occult Phenomena and Their Psychological Explanation]. Prague: J. Otto. Fourier, Charles (1966) Oeuvres Complètes de Charles Fourier, Vol. 6. Paris: Éditions Anthropos. Freud, Sigmund (1953–1975) ‘Lecture 23: The Paths to the Formation of Symptoms’. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, James Strachey (ed.), Vol. 15, London: Hogarth Press. —— (1953–1975) The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, James Strachey (ed.), Vol. 4, London: Hogarth Press. Geldard, Frank A. (1960) ‘Some Neglected Possibilities of Communication’. Science 131, 27 May: 1583–1588. Gunther, Bernard (1968) Sense Relaxation: Below your Mind. New York: Collier Books. Hošek, A. (1991) Souvislost Barev a Tonů [Relationship of Colours and Tones] (1928). Republished Prague: Galerie Hlavního Města Prahy.

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 177

6/03/2014 10:07 am

178

Touching and Imagining Kafka, Franz (1919) In der Strafkolonie. Leipzig: Kurt Wolff. Kalandra, Záviš (1947) Skutečnost Snu [The Reality of Dream]. Unfinished manuscript. Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1984) Tristes Tropiques. Paris: Terre Humaine, Plon. Marinetti, F. T. (1921) ‘The Manifesto of Tactilism’, Milan: Comoedia, 11 January. Maury, Alfred (1861) Le Sommeil et les Rêves. Paris: Didier. Mennen, Richard (1975) ‘Grotowski’s Paratheatrical Projects’. TDR/The Drama Review, 19, 4, December: 58–69. Mysliveček, Dr Z. (1959) Obecná Psychiatrie [General Psychiatry]. Prague: Státní Zdravotnické Nakladatelství. Nezval, Vítězlav (1967) ‘Dekalkomanie’ (1937). In Magnetická Pole, J. Tomeš (ed.). Prague: 124–126. Poe, Edgar Allan (1988) The Complete Illustrated Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. London: Chancellor Press. Rachilde (1900) La Jongleuse. Paris: Mercure de France. Rimbaud, Arthur (1966) Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters, a Bilingual Edition, Wallace Fowlie (trans. and ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Šalda, F. X. (1901–02) ‘Hrdinný Zrak’ [‘Heroic Vision’]. In Volné Směry [Free Directions] 6: 71–73. Švankmajer Jan and Matt, Gerald A. (2011) ‘Jan Švankmajer in Conversation with Gerald A. Matt.’ In Ursula Blickle and Gerald A. Matt. (eds), The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer (German/English. Vienna: Ursula-Blickle-Stiftung and Kunsthalle. Švankmajer, Jan (1987) ‘Like the Touch of a Dead Trout’, Gaby Dowdell (trans.). Afterimage 13, Autumn: 40–1. —— (1987) ‘The Magic Ritual of Tactile Inauguration’, Gaby Dowdell (trans.). Afterimage 13, Autumn: 42–3. —— (1994) Hmat a Imaginace [Touch and Imagination]. Prague: Kozoroh. —— (2003) ‘Tactilní Bilance’ [‘Tactilism Reviewed’]. Analogon 38/39: 27–29. —— (2004) Transmutace Smyslů – Transmutation of the Senses (1994), (bilingual) second edition, S. Hošková, K. Otcovská and O. Fridlová (eds). Prague: Pražská/Metrostav. Švankmajerová, Eva and Švankmajer, Jan (1998), Anima, Animus, Animace. Prague: Slovart Publishers, Ltd and Arbor Vitae – Foundation for Literature and Visual Arts. Teige, Karel (1930–31) Svět který Voní [The World that Smells]. Prague: Jan Fromek, Edition Odeon. —— (1966) Vývojové proměny v  uměni [Developmental Changes in Art]. Prague: Nakladatelství Československých Výtvarných Umělců, Edition Orientace, 1966. Vasseleu, Cathryn (2009a) ‘The Švankmajer Touch’. Animation Studies, special issue: Animated Dialogues (2007), posted July 19: 91–101. Accessable online: journal.animationstudies.org/ cathryn-vasseleu-the-svankmajer-touch/ —— (2009b) ‘Tactile Animation: Haptic Devices and the Švankmajer Touch’. The Senses and Society 4, 2, July: 141–162. Vondráček, V. (1949) Vnímání [Perception]. Prague: Zdravotní Nakladatelství. Vrba, Luděk (1981) Unpublished notes. Children’s Psychiatric Clinic, Motol. FILMOGRAPHY Buñuel, Luis (dir.) (1929) Un Chien Andalou. Paris: Ursuline Studios. Švankmajer, Jan (dir.) (1973–9) The Castle of Otranto [Otrantsky Zámek]. Prague: Krátky Film/Jiří Trnka Studio. —— (1980) The Fall of the House of Usher [Zánik Domo Usherů]. Prague: Krátky Film/Jiří Trnka Studio. —— (1982) Dimensions of Dialogue [Možnosti Dialogu]. Prague: Krátky Film/Jiří Trnka Studio. —— (1983) The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope [Kyvadlo, Jáma a Naděje]. Prague: Krátky Film/Jiří Trnka Studio. —— (1996) Conspirators of Pleasure [Spiklenci Slasti]. Czech Republic/Switzerland/UK: Athanor (Knovíz)/Delfilm (Switzerland)/Koninck (UK).

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 178

6/03/2014 10:08 am

INDEX

Numbers in italics indicate illustrations alchemy, xv, 68 alchemistic tools, 28 Algelander, A., 79 analogy, 20, 32–39, 46, 61, 65, 75, 80, 81, 97 associative delirium, 21 synaesthetic, 70–71, 168 Apollinaire Guillaume, 90–91, 92, 163 Ay-O, 97, 99 Baron, Karol, 39, 41, 44, 46, 47, 49, 54 blindness, xxiii, 10, 18, 68, 171 art for blind people, 82 colour blindness/Daltonism, 19 tactile blindness, 19 Boccioni, Umberto, 88, 90 Boucher, François, 53 Bounoure, Micheline, 12, 15, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 102 Breton, André, 53, 59 Brouk, Bohuslav, 175n4 Buñuel, Luis, 103 Caillois, Roger, 46 Camus, Albert, 109 Castle of Otranto, The, xix censorship, xv, xix clothes, 4, 28, 40, 130, 131, 139, 174n3 d’Hervey, Marquis, 59, 116 Dadaism, 92, 96 neo-Dadaism, 90 Dalí, Salvador, xvi, 59, 72, 102, 103, 105, 155

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 179

Darwin, Charles, 39, 49 Devětsil, 100 Dimensions of Dialogue, xxii, 154, 169 disgust, 39, 40–44, 46–50, 57, 63, 67, 78, 175n7 distribution of tactile art, 164 Dominguez, Oscar, 101, 103 dreams, 12, 41, 52, 54, 55–56, 58, 61, 67, 75, 82, 99, 139 erotic, 55 experimentally aroused, 58, 67, 170 oral, 55 tactile, 21, 25, 28, 53, 54, 55, 58, 61, 67, 82, 99, 113, 170 Drvota, Stanislav, 28 Dryje, František, 32, 35, 39, 41, 42, 43, 47, 49, 50 Dubret, Michel, 32, 38, 39, Dubuffet, Jean, 89 Duchamp, Marcel, 1, 104, 105, 106, 155, 163, 165 Dunant, Gilles, 32, 38, 39 Effenberger, Vratislav, xviii, 12, 15, 18, 20, 21, 22, 32, 34, 39, 41–47, 49, 55, 61–62 tactile portrait of, 136, 137 Eluard, Gala, 102 emotion, 14, 16, 39, 49, 59, 76, 100 expression, xxii, 8, 39, 85, 94–95,149, 151, 169, 114 tactile, 45, 51, 67, 105, 115–16, 149, 151, 169, 105, 115–16, 123 visual, 83

6/03/2014 10:08 am

180

Touching and Imagining Ernst, Max, 101, 105 eroticism, 2, 25, 28, 51, 55, 55, 62, 75, 79 childhood, 174n4 erogenous zones, 174n4 touch and, xxiii, 80, 96, 99 Export, Valie, 83

Kocman, J. H., 99 Kolář, Jíří, 90 Koubek, Jiří, 32, 34, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 49 Kounellis, Jannis, 90 Krátký Film, xix

Fall of the House of Usher, The, 151, 152–53, 169 See also Poe, Edgar Allan fear, 43–46, 49–50, 55, 73–74, 115, 134 infantile, 67 of blindness, 41 of touching, 39, 40, 43, 48–49, 67, 117, 136 sensations, 73–74 fingers, xx, 1, 19, 21, 38, 40, 46, 80, 82, 87, 105 exploring objects, 6, 12, 18, 19, 21, 115, 132, 136 fingertips, 3, 105, 109, 134, 173n4 preparation for touching, 63, 80, 134 used to discharge emotion, 115, 151, 157, 169 Forster, V., 68 Fourier, Charles, 69 Freud, Sigmund, xx, 49, 52, 56, 58, 65, 82 Futurism, xvi, 93–96 see also Marinetti, F. T.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 69 loathing, 28, 39–43

Galton, Francis, 79 games, xviii, xix, xvi childhood, 10 interpretive, 12–25, 32–39, 155–77 synaesthetic, 70–71 tactile, xviii, xxi, 11, 31, 146, 164 Geldard, Frank A., 4, 173n2–n3 gesture, 39, 61, gestural sculpture, 149–53 tactile, 63, 105 Gilardi, Piero, 89 Grotowski, Jerzy, 4–5 Gunther, Bernard, 5, 10, 99, 113, 160–64 Heraclitus, 114 Hošek, A., 68 humour and touch, 139, 155 Kafka, Franz, 26 Kalandra, Záviš, 52, 56, 65, 67, 82 Kiesler, Frédérick, 104, 105

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 180

Man Ray, 88 Marenčin, Albert, 12, 15, 18, 20, 21, 22, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 85, 87 Marinetti, F. T., 5, 80, 85, 91, 93–97, 99, 101, 105, 114, 134, 163, 164 masturbation, 26, 32–39, 49, 61–62, 67 see also onanism Maury, Alfred, 56, 58, 61, 65, 113 Medek, Mikuláš, 76–78, 107 tactile portrait of, 77 Medková, Emila, 12, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 32, 34, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 49, 63, 66, 134, 168 Mena, Pedro de, 86 Mennen, Richard, 4 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, xxii metamorphosis, 83, 105, 169, 174 tactile, 67, 116, 169 Mojžíš, Juraj, 12, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 Motol Hospital, Prague Children’s Psychiatric Clinic, 6 psychological tests with tactile tablets, 6–10 mucous membranes, 28 Nádvorníková, Alena, 12, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 57, 61, 65 new realism, 90 Nezval, Vítězlav, xvi, 101 Novák, Ladislav, 79, 99 tactile poems, 97–98 Oldenburg, Claes, 89 onanism, 28, 175n4 see also masturbation Oppenheim, Meret, 102 Parent, Mimi, 26 pathological touch, 28 hypersensitivity, 40, 39, 40, 68 paraesthesia, 174n3 tactile hallucination, 28, 67, 174n3

6/03/2014 10:08 am

index Pendulum, The Pit and Hope, The, 169–70 Picasso, Pablo, 88, 90 Poe, Edgar Allan, xxi–xxii, 82, 151 Poetism, xvi, 3, 70, 79, 97, 100 ‘Second Manifesto of Poetism’, 100–1 see also Teige, Karel; Nezval, Vítězlav pop art, 90 Rachilde, 84–85, 96 repression, xx, 38 repulsion, 39–49, 74, 160, 168 Rimbaud, Arthur, 59, 68, 69, 70 rubbing, 113, 161 of fingers, hands, 117, 174n4 scrubbing, 116, 163, 174n3 Šalda, F.X., 1 samizdat, xv, xvii, xix sensory deprivation, 41 tactile deprivation, xxiii, 3 sight, 1, 100, 149 role in tactile art, 67, 155 touch implications, 10, 14, 51, 61, 80, 83, 90, 126–131 soft art, 90 Spanish Baroque, 85, 90 squeamishness, xxii, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 67 Stejskal, Martin, 12, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 39, 40, 42, 43, 48, 49, 55, 57, 67 subject–object dualism, 24, 149 Surrealism, 22, 100–1, 105, 176n11 French Surrealists, 100 Group of Czech–Slovak Surrealists, xix, xxi, 2, 72, 167 Šváb, Ludvík, 12, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 105 tactile portrait of, 138, 139 Švankmajerová, Eva, xvi–xvii, xxiii, 39, 40, 41, 43, 45, 48, 62, 63, 126–31, 141 tactile portrait of, 134, 135 synaesthesia, 19, 28, 68, 70–71, 72, 79, 80, 82, 127, 168, 174n1, 174n3

181

tactile collage, 119, 122–3, 123 tactile imagination, xvi, xxii, 28, 67, 96, 155 film applications, 169–70 roots of, 28, 105 Surrealist, 100–107 tactile interpretation, 12–13, 22, 24, 75, 155 tactile memory, xxii, 6, 10, 12, 118, 132, 167–69 childhood, xx, xxii, 25, 46, 49, 51, 167 role in tactile art, 17, 51, 105 somatic sources, 20 tactile ready-mades, 109–111 tactile therapy, 4–5, 113 see also Gunther, Bernard Tactilism (art movement), xvi, 96, 97, 99, 101, 105 Futurist Manifesto of, 93–96 see also Marinetti, F. T. tactilism (sensory), xxi–xxii, 10, 90, 105, 136, 162, 168–170 bodies as crucibles of, 28 creative, 90, 105 tattooing, 83 Teige, Karel, xvi, 3, 70, 79, 100–01 ‘Second Manifesto of Poetism’, 100–1 totalitarian systems, xix–xx Uecker, Gunther, 89 utilitarianism, xx, 5, 81 utilitarian functions, xvi, 1, 2, 3, 4, 28, 67, 80, 101 utilitarian habits, 5, 80, 123, 165 utilitarian objects, 4, 109 utilitarian touch, 51, 80, 90, 105, 115, 165 Van Eyck, Jan, 83, 86 Vince, 32, 37, 39 Vrba, Luděk, 10 see also Motol Hospital, Prague Williams, Edith Clifford, 91, 92, 96

tactile cinema, 103, 105, 155 see also Dalí, Salvador

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 181

6/03/2014 10:08 am

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 182

6/03/2014 10:08 am

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 183

6/03/2014 10:08 am

TouchingandImagining_FinalPages_v2.indd 184

6/03/2014 10:08 am