In “Touch,” single cocoon from the bombyx mori, or mulberry silkworm, hangs over a stack of letter sized paper. In the upper righthand corner of each paper is the word “touch,” followed by a verbatim representation of a found profile from a queer hookup app. In reference to the minimalist Marxist ideas of Felix Gonzalez-Torres regarding the decommodification of art, each paper is meant to be taken by the viewer, a memento of an autonomously created presence that then dictates the viewer’s experience to and relationship with the monosyllabic monolith of Touch. By reinterpreting moments of non-physical queer self representation through physical media, those moments are preserved in a manner similar to the entomological corpse that hangs above them; forever suspended in a moment of nondescript potentiality. This physical interpretation creates a sharp contrast between the physical handling of the paper and the original, intended context of the profiles: in empty rooms, looking at lit screens, perpetually seeking physical touch in an entirely non-physical space.
While the textual aspects of Touch investigate the ontological considerations of its own nomenclature by employing queer self-representation as found poetry, the cocoon serves as a grounding mechanism. As a remnant of a transition between two biological states, the silk serves as a physical refutation of presupposed binary structures. The solitude of the metamorphic remnant exemplifies the multifaceted nature of the monosyllabic title, and thereby the queer capacity to occupy more than one space simultaneously.
