Foreword to Issue 3: Touch
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CHRISTOPHER SQUIER and JULIAN WONG-NELSON
For the current issue of DISSOLVE we examine the theme of haptics—or touch—as it relates to specific sites, spaces, works, and their tangents.
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Of Relics, Ritual, and Rusty Objects
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ALICE COMBS
In this essay, Combs speculates on the broader haptic connections between sites of repetitive touch such as the St. Peter’s statue in the Vatican, a stair banister smoothed from use, and her artistic project of polishing rusty industrial remains. How does cleaning or polishing reveal norms of entitlement, sociality, or possession?
Read MoreIf You Find This Position Uncomfortable
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ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO
Thank you for clicking on the link to this visual and written piece. Let us now begin.
Read MoreI Am (Not) Myself: West African Masquerade Tradition and the Construction of the Self
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NA CHAINKUA REINDORF
Reindorf's immersive installation project, Reveal||Conceal, introduces a less familiar art of the West African masquerade and functions as a contemporary strategy to undermine the unobstructed male gaze, while attempting to redistribute power structures that surround body ownership and policing. This project combines themes of feminism, cultural exploration, the public/private and the mystification of the observed body.
Read MoreSeeing Spores: Taken by Odor
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JACKIE VALLE
What does it mean to engage the body’s avisual senses to tap into registers of knowledge missed by sight? How does smell, as a sense inherently complex, intimate, and uncontainable, work through a more tactile logic than sight?
Read MoreDigital Intangibility, an Ideology
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JUAN PABLO PACHECO
Digital images and information make up a vast portion of the global economy in the 21st century based upon the exchange of seemingly intangible goods. The ability to touch the goods one consumes in these economies is displaced, establishing new spatial and temporal relations along the chain of production and dislocating the violence at the core of neoliberal societies. The power relations and material conditions that enable digital goods to circulate through our contemporary economies are obscured by an ideology of digital intangibility.
Read MoreIf These Gloves Could Talk: Park Chan Wook's The Handmaiden
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JOSEPH DWYER
Often noted for their visual spectacles of sexual and violent excess, the films of Park Chan-wook present reoccurring themes manifested through the body. From his early work Sympathy for Mr Vengeance to his latest film The Handmaiden, haptic forms of communication offer a different perspective on themes of exploitation, the ferocious nature of capitalism, and muted desire.
Read MoreSurgical Experiments in the Medium of Collage
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IRENA AZOVSKY
"In my work, I tend to explore the potential of collage outside of the "cut and paste" limitations. I like to push the boundaries to see how much texture and layers I can fit into one piece without actually needing to glue anything down. This may involve weaving, cutting and intertwining and on occasion a little assistance from artist tape behind the scenes. As part of the nature of this process, I have worked in aspects of the collages that are non-static, that are intentionally free to move about the piece within the enclosed environment provided. This creates a new dimension where the collage work can take on a life of its own."
Read MoreRitual Delusion, Medicinal Belief
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JASON RASMUSSEN
Object performance, touch as a cure, and irrational ritual: as we interact with the physical world, patterns occur. Household objects gain magical value and therapies are formed out of belief. Rituals develop around the way we interact with the people and objects around us.
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