LACE #3, new theme!
When, in 2024, we chose hospitality to be one of three subtopics of the LACE #2: Mediating Touch symposium, we couldn’t have anticipated how quickly and deeply that notion would resonate with the community. At one of our regular meetings following the event Sylvia looked at Deirdre and me and said, “It feels like, with hospitality, we tapped into the zeitgeist.” In an attempt to understand how we did that, how we tapped into the collective unconscious, I looked through the material we shared in anticipation of LACE #2 and was surprised by what I discovered. All the texts we had time to publish in anticipation of the event worked with the concept and the practice of mediation and the concept and the practice of hospitality. We never actually got to describing integration and the interstitial, the two notions that were so important to us we featured them in the subtitle alongside hospitality. It’s as if, without even realising it at the time, we too were mesmerised by hospitality. How else do we interpret the fact that we gave it almost all our time and resources?
October. Vienna is unusually warm for this time of year. The afternoon traffic is picking up. I head for the window reluctantly, worried that the room getting warmer will put me right to sleep. With the noise levels on the rise, however, we’re left with no choice. The window closed, I sit back down and smile at the image I see on the screen. The frame to the left shows Deirdre. Deirdre’s drinking their matcha latte, looking fresh and rested. It’s still early morning in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The frame to the right takes me out of time. Sylvia and I are dressed for April, shoulders bare, faces shiny with perspiration. Looking at us, I could be watching a recording instead of a live feed. I shake my head to call myself back to the present.
The atmosphere is thick with feeling. We’ve spent the last couple of hours dreaming of topics for the next symposium. Our conversation was meandering, hopeful, but constantly returning to last year’s subtitle. We’ve not experienced this before, this feeling of un-finished-ness, incompleteness. “What if we didn’t simply tap into the zeitgeist,” I speak to think, “what if we discovered themes we care about deeply and have a reason to keep working with? Plus, what if the themes we chose last year take more than a single symposium to address, more than a year to study? What if, in other words, we’re constantly coming back to last year’s subtitle because we’re not done with it yet? I mean, look at our track record. We’ve not even written about integration!”
The verb to integrate comes from Latin for whole, or making whole. Many definitions of the verb include mentions of bringing things or people together, part or whole, to make something complete. That integration describes a bringing together will probably not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the colloquial definition and usage of the term. The thing with colloquial definitions, however, is that they’re often focused on the most evident, most direct, most common applications of a term. Which is why it’s so fun to read dictionary entries. The Online Etymology Dictionary, for example, traces the trajectory of the 17th century definition of the verb to integrate through French intégration directly to Latin integrationem (nominative integratio) for renewal, restoration, insinuating that to make something complete necessarily means to make something (a)new.
I think back through my collection of memories for evidence. When scheduled (which they are often not), integration classes tend to be placed at the end of the day, or the end of the week, or even workshop or process as a whole. In the case of our symposium, integration was presented as an activity that can be engaged in at any time, but only at the cost of missing out. This evidence suggests that integration classes are often not considered to be an essential part of experiencing, of processing as a whole. To further support my case, I remember that integration classes will often be classified as optional, suggesting that integration isn’t necessarily an activity you need to engage in collectively.
What would it mean to treat integration as an essential activity? And an activity to be engaged in collectively?
But that’s not where the definition ends. A speculative entry in the same dictionary introduces a relation of a Proto-Indo-European root tag- to in-teg-rate, meaning to touch, or handle, insinuating that to integrate must mean to make whole (anew) by putting things together, by putting them in touch. Read like so, integration can be thought as an essentially creative activity. Furthermore, touch itself–via integration–lends itself to being thought of as an essentially creative activity.
What would it mean to treat integration not only as an essential, but an essentially creative activity? And if we commit to thinking integration as an activity that includes touch and touching, how does thinking integration as an essentially creative activity helps us understand touching as essentially creative?
What would it mean to treat touching as an essentially creative activity?
With LACE #3: Materialising Touch, we want examine the labour of integration, its effort (action) and its time (duration). We want to ask, “What does it actually take to include or integrate the space for integration within the structures we operate in? As artists, academics, or activists.” If any of the above mentioned themes make you think of your work, please check our OPEN CALL out. We are currently looking for examples of touch-based or relational, material practices developed in the artistic and academic fields of dance and the performing arts that exemplify the labour of integration!