How can we speak to each other without using words? What does this age of not touching teach us about contact and how much closeness is there in distance?
Tactile Talk invites you into a landscape of foam rocks for a non-verbal gathering. Performers guide you through interactions with each other and with the rocks. Place a rock, make eye contact, follow, take charge, stand back, watch. A common language emerges. The space between us is questioned and made visible.
Tactile Talk is an encounter, a silent conversation about making contact, setting boundaries, noticing what moves us and what moves between us. It is a visual game, a social choreography in which we explore distance and proximity.
This season, Katrien Oosterlinck works on Tactile Talk – Antwerp. It is the first in a series of participative creating processes under the name Tactile Talk.
It started with a series of workshops in collaboration with several organizations such as Het Oude Badhuis, ATLAS, PI Multiversum Mortsel, ZNA Stuivenberg and Erasmus, ccBe and OKAN Berchem. Throughout the different gatherings, Katrien developed several visual and physical dialogue exercises. Participants had the opportunity to discover with her practice as she could meet them in their own context. From this series of workshops, an intensive trajectory blossomed with people from Langdurige Zorg of ZNA Stuivenberg. Katrien was given a weekly atelier in the regular therapy program and was thus able to continue working even during the lockdown.
About ten participants from the workshops are now working in the creation of Tactile Talk – Antwerp. There were some residencies at wp Zimmer and hetpaleis and are now starting at ccBe. The performance is being developed in interaction. They are aiming for a presentation for an internal audience on the Day of Dance.
In the fall of 2021 Tactile Talk will start up in Brussels with a new trajectory of workshops, rehearsals and a performance in December 2021 in Kaaistudio’s.