It's very revealing to treat materials as people, finding physical ways of connecting to them.
Why touching materials? Is it that I don't like people enough? Am I socially crippled?
When I was little I had trouble to communicate with words, especially my feelings. I was highly sensitive to people, things and situations, but I was not able to communicate back using words. I sent telepathic messages (seriously :-) and touching. I thought touching would send my thoughts - physically - to the other person.
Now I touch materials as a way of expanding this extra language, one that doesn't need words to exist. A skin universal language, one that we can all understand.
How can touching materials help me? You might ask. Will touching the walls open my eyes to a new world? Hell yes.
There is no lying in touching. The most beautiful poster will feel "dead" under your fingers when it is made out of toxic pvc.
Touching brings us back to a primitive language, that of the cells, an older memory.
Touching belongs to our full body. Touching writes a map of our whole body. Touching is body complete.
Touching is real. Touching brings ourselves back into the moment. It makes us aware, it wakes us up.
Touching connects with our emotions first, before calling our intelligence to place that sensation into the right meaning.
There are not touch-handicaps. Every body has skin. Every body feels, something, somewhere. Even when you don't allow yourself to do so, your skin stills feels. There are not touch-blind, deaf or crippled. We all have a skin. We can all touch. Touch is universal and makes us all able and capable.
Touching does not need words to be defined or compared.
Touching is our ultimate connecting tool while being our sole proprietorship.
Touching makes us human while keeping us animals.
Touching is the ultimate democratic sense, we all understand touching.
Touching is a cultural tool. Different cultures relate very differently to touching (each other, others, even themselves). You might not guess the cultural background of a person immediately by only looking at her/him. But you might very well guess by the way she is open or not to touch and being touched.
Touching is sexy. Touching is intimate.
Touching honors our body. Touching is a honorable act. It poses gratitude and love for the body we touch.
Touching has no reason to exist. Even if you do not wish to touch anyone, you inevitably touch. Your skin does.
Touching can expand infinitely. Its intensity, its size, its meaning. Touching expands the other senses.
Touching is timeless. Touching allows time to exist. You cannot make "touch-clips" like we do with music videos, with shorter and shorter attention spans.
Perhaps our highly visual culture has lowered down our touching capacity and desire. Visual pleasure is overrated. Our eyes are a gift, but not the only gift.
Touch yourself, touch your neighbor, touch your walls, your subway tiles, your underwear.
Touch!