Touch Assignment

Touch

zhēnjiǔ

"Pain has plagued us throughout the history of our species. We spend our lives trying to avoid it, and from one point of view what we call "happiness" may be just the absence of pain......we have many pains that surge from within as cramps and aches. And we also talk about emotional stress as pain. Pain are often combined. the emotional the physical and the physical with the physical." (Diana Ackerman, 104)
This piece represents an individual embracing pain and using it to heal and become better by acknowledging it. zhēnjiǔ means acupuncture in Chinese which is the practice of inserting needles into the skin to treat physical and emotional illness. The process seems painful to those who are not experienced in the practice assuming needles in the skin are painful as is however, these needles are not felt by the individual for their inner pain overshadows that but it is through this however that the inner pain is released and accepted
In my piece, the individual has pins pushing through the pads of their finger as they cradle the ball of masking tape that has been punctured multiple times. The individual in this piece does not feel the pain in their fingers but feel the  multiple needles from the masking tape stabbing their palm. The masking tape ball stabbed by multiple push pins serve to represent the emotional pain in each and everyone of us, and is greater than physical pain in many ways and in fact can even detract from the physical pain. 

The Prayer of the Animals 

"Touch is a powerfully important sense among animals, for whom the slightest touch of an object or another animal triggers responses"(Diane Ackerman, 98)

This piece is made up of my house cat Mikah and an Native American prayer stick made by my friend Wananubi(White Bear) and I. Mikah is feeling reaching out to the prayer stick but not with his paws, rather his whiskers. Instead of seeing the prayer stick as visual stimuli he sees it as sensory stimuli, wanting to feel it in the only way he knows how. The prayer stick itself is made of Spanish turkey from Spain and the geese from the mountains of Georgia also causes him to react. As Diane Ackerman mentioned that in Folk lore animals have sense that go beyond just feeling, that they can sense events. I feel as though Mikah connects with the animals these feathers came from and connects with them in a way I may never understand whether as prey or as kin.