Notes on Hapticity

Founded at the end of 2019, their activities as a collective were catalysed by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on spatiality, social relations, and haptic modes of interacting. Their guiding principle departs from the concept of the ‘haptic encounter’ — a theme that extends as a red thread throughout their individual practices and collective presentations. In the most literal understanding of the concept, it refers to that which evokes a kinaesthetic responsiveness — encompassing processes of resistance, collision, and permeation. (1)  Beyond this definition, the collective also approaches the concept from a perspective that considers more expansive and metaphorical notions of touch, imprint and inscription — experiences that reverberate long after the initial encounter. Memory, trauma, collective imagination, affect, social codification and rituals, for example, are all embedded with traces of haptic encounters.

Their projects encompass exhibitions, printed matter, web articles and lectures. Through these platforms, NOH brings their respective practices and areas of interest into dialogue with one another, often forming collaborative constellations with other interlocutors and fellow artists in the process. They seek to stimulate interaction and deeper engagement between diverse epistemologies, exploring how artistic sensibilities can meaningfully contribute to disciplines and discourses, including critical theory, (visual-)anthropology, and historiography. (2) NOH believes that art can surely go beyond a mere aestheticising of these fields, and can uncover new perspectives, research techniques, and produce the kind of crucial questions capable of mobilising knowledge production.

As of summer 2023, the current core members of Notes on Hapticity are Elena Kostenko, Kees van Leeuwen, and Hannah Dawn Henderson.

Read more about the members here

(1) Kinaesthetic: the sensory perception of movement
Permeation: the act of spreading through something and becoming present in every part of it.
(2) Historiography: The study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline