Welcome!

This Spring Review package is a small invitation into my touchy-feely, sticky-softly, scratchy-aggy research project Performing objects, tactile data, sense-ative documents and feelwork: touch as method for critical ecological stewardship in England. 

I invite you to be a fellow traveller in the research. Perhaps before you read you take a moment to sense yourself in space… 

1. Where and how are you sitting? What language is your posture speaking? What unspoken messages is your body leaking?... 

2. How is your temperature being regulated right now? Are you insulating or cooling yourself? With a sweater, a heater, a hot drink, an open window?

3. Make a mental or written note of all of the plants you have touched today, from the moment you opened your eyes on your pillow to now. Think deep!...

4. Is there an object close to hand that gives you comfort? What is its nature? 

5. Are you outside or close to a window? Take a look at the sky - how does your own weather compare? 

This package contains a 500 word ever-iterating abstract; a 5000 word foundational piece of writing addressing ‘why touch’; then three short research studies that are demonstrating in different ways how art is re-sensitising and addressing inequalities in the practice of ecological stewardship in England through a focus on touch: Coming into contact with a river you can not touch which is a set of material studies; Embodying climate adaptation: a sensory performance lecture in the age of powerpointlessness online seminar format; Laughing Materials! which is an experiment in participatory-performance-workshopping-installation.