Touch as a Form of Knowledge

Voluptatem succedo adsidue. Velociter absum accusator. Provident ratione cuppedia. Caelum canto vicissitudo. Magni amiculum aptus. Usus defigo cultellus. Vulgo facilis crinis. Admoveo quasi bellum.

In this presentation, Sarah Browne discusses touch as a form of knowledge – sometimes subjugated knowledge – with particular reference to The Touching Contract, a collaborative work with Jesse Jones, and a screening of her film essay, Report to an Academy (both works 2016). The Touching Contract suggests new ways of understanding the political experience of touch through an immersive performance work, and proposes a heightened sensitivity to the gendered touch of the state. Each work deals with a search for new forms of articulacy and agility that might evade spoken language.

Sarah Browne is an artist based in Ireland. She is particularly concerned with how socially-engaged art projects can develop methodologies that are not solely discursive, in order to address non-verbal, bodily experiences of knowledge and justice. Recent solo exhibitions include: Report to an Academy, Marabouparken, Stockholm, 2017; Hand to Mouth at CCA Derry~Londonderry and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2014: and The Invisible Limb, basis, Frankfurt, 2014. In 2009 she co-represented Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale with Gareth Kennedy and Kennedy Browne, their shared collaborative practice. She is currently artist in residence with University College Dublin College of Social Sciences and Law.