The fragility of holding and letting go

2019/20

Consisting of analogue hand prints and a video work with sound, this project brings together disquieting actions and familiar gestures, fragmentary images joined together by strange sounds to form a whole.

While faces remain unrecognised in the video, someone braids a woman’s hair, which has been cut into two lengths. A woman inflicts pain on herself by placing her hand on the table and rubbing her knuckles. A game of intimacy and distance, touching and letting go emerges.

The video sound recreates the social media phenomenon Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, or ASMR for short – a soothing tingling sensation and feeling of intimacy triggered by certain sensory sound experiences such as the rhythmic clicking of fingernails, crackling wrappers or whispering.