A vocabulary for the future: touch

A Vocabulary for the Future is a series by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona in which notable thinkers reflect on a word of their choosing and are paired with filmmakers who give their writing a visual interpretation. Together, they invite viewers to see familiar language anew, in the hope of laying the groundwork for a better tomorrow. In this instalment, the American theoretical physicist and feminist theorist Karen Barad muses on the nature of touch.

Drawing partly on their essay ‘On Touching—The Inhuman That Therefore I Am’ (2012), Barad begins with a puzzle from classical physics: touch, strictly speaking, never happens, since what we feel as contact is only electromagnetic repulsion between atoms that never actually meet. Turning to quantum field theory, they reframe the question entirely. If matter has no stable, self-contained identity – if it is entangled with other matter from the very start – then touch is not a failed meeting between separate bodies, but something already constitutive of what matter is.

Paired with visuals by the Barcelona-based digital artist Blanca Rego, the result is a mesmerising set of images that, alongside Barad’s words, turn something as ordinary as touch into a doorway into the deepest questions in physics and philosophy. When artworks dare audiences to break a cardinal museum rule A unique theatre performance explores what touch means in an age of lockdown As technologies mine our attention, we must look to artists Meeting your boyfriend’s family is hard. Agata must travel 3,000 miles.

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