Honours in Visual Studies Class of 2020, Tactile visions.

Top left to right: Nomvuyo Nxele, Kimberley Moolman, Unathi Shongwe, Kellyn Davies

Bottom left to right: Dr Jenni Lauwrens, Ashley Bruce, Daniël Goosen, Stirling Blunden

In an ironic turn of events, just as the Visual Studies Honours Class of 2020 was about to embark on the topic of Embodiment and Visual Culture, all face-to-face lectures at the University of Pretoria were cancelled. Shortly thereafter, South Africa went into ‘lockdown’ and on 4 May, the University’s teaching programme migrated to an exclusively digital offering on ClickUP. At the very moment that I was to proceed with a lecture on how our engagement with the (visual) world is an amalgamation of bodily (and multisensory) experiences combined with intellectual processes, our sensory worlds, certainly in the public spaces we usually share with others, suddenly diminished significantly.  

‘Social distancing’ and ‘self-isolation’ are concepts that, in recent weeks, and in light of the rapid spread of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), have become a matter of life or death. In response, many people, not only in South Africa but across the globe, have hunkered down, sheltering in place, and are staying at home in an effort to ‘flatten the curve’. When unavoidable, our interactions with others are now mediated by hand sanitisers and masks at the very least.

When we leave our homes for short trips to buy food or other so-called ‘essential goods’ we now move about awkwardly so that we remain at least 1m away from anyone else. Doing the social distancing dance, hardly anyone looks at each other, and when we do look at another person’s face, we see only their eyes while their mouths and noses are covered by a growing variety of masks. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to read other people’s facial expressions, let alone hear the nuances in their voices. We have to rely on the information given to us through the other person’s eyes alone, which can sometimes unwittingly lead to a hostile interaction, or miscommunication at the very least.

Equally, the boundaries of touch have very suddenly, and without our consent or input, transformed how we interact with and think and feel about our world. In addition, the smells and tastes that once filled public spaces have mostly been removed. With restaurants closed there is no inviting smell of coffee, fried food, pizza, and so forth in the spaces in which we are still allowed access. On Google Hangouts and WhatsApp video calls, we see and hear our colleagues, friends and family, but we cannot touch or smell them. Neither can we participate with them in the many tasty food rituals we so recently shared.

It seems that, certainly from the perspective of the human sensorium, sight and hearing are being privileged in the ‘new normal’ state of public affairs into which we have been thrown. And this is happening at the expense of the senses of touch, taste and smell. In some ways, the hierarchies and borders between the so-called distance senses – seeing and hearing – and the so-called proximal senses – touch, taste, and smell – are being reinscribed into our new social practices. This is reminiscent of earlier moments in western history when the division of the senses into distinct modalities (and hierarchies) conveniently worked hand in hand not only with scientific discourse, but also with a discourse of ‘ideal’ aesthetic experience. 

But contrary to the assumption that seeing is a distancing sense, it can also be thought about as a tactile sense that connects us to others. Although this may be a difficult concept to ‘grasp’, in our Honours class we read a number of articles that renegotiate the idea that seeing images is an operation that involves only the organs of sight – the eyeballs – as if they were disconnected (disembodied) from the rest of our bodies. These authors think about seeing as a tactile and intimate sensory experience. We might also think about how the eyes are able to convey a multitude of emotions. A powerful exchange – potentially either positive or negative – takes place in the few seconds that we look people in the eye. These encounters may undoubtedly be painful – as we have all experienced by now. But they may also potentially be affectionate exchanges that can convey empathy. I asked the Honours class to think about their interactions with other peoples’ eyes in the coming weeks and months and to remember that their eyes ‘touch’ the eyes of others. Instead of not looking at others at all, we might try to use our eyes differently in ways that express empathy, compassion and gratitude in our visually embodied interactions. This is precisely what we tried to demonstrate in the above collage of photographs.