« When I was 20 I thought I knew everything about                                              love, about how a healthy intimate relationship should                                              be, how desire functions. Today, after 20 years of                                              trials and tribulations, all the views that I had on                                              intimacy back then lost their definition and grew                                              more and more complex and unsettlingly                                              contradictory. As a reflection of this personal journey,                                              TOUCH ME NOT is an artistic research about the                                              human longing and yet (in)ability to <<touch>> and                                              <<be touched>>, to make contact.
Intimacy plays a central role in human experience, having its roots in the initial physical, emotional and psychological bond between the mother and the new-born. It is through this primary attachment that the infant has the first contact with the world and starts building its sense of self. This initial contact shapes the infant’s brain, profoundly influencing its self-esteem, its expectations of others, and later, how it bonds and approaches intimacy as an adult.
Beyond its crucial role in identity formation, healthy intimacy at an individual level has major implications at community level, allowing a psychosocial network of human beings connected through solid emotional attachments.
Dysfunctional intimacy within the family nucleus fosters fertile ground for further conflict, abuse, discrimination and prejudice at a larger, social and political scale.
TOUCH ME NOT aims to become a space for (self)reflection and transformation, where the viewer is challenged to deepen their knowledge of human nature and to re-evaluate their experience and ideas about intimate human relationships, with a particular focus on de-objectification and personalization of human exchange, on stimulating our curiosity about the different “Other” and our empathic ability to place ourselves into the Other’s <<skin>>. I personally believe that understanding the human nature and exercising our capacity to perceive the other as <<another me>>, as another possibility of our own self, can have an essential transformative power, both of our inner self and of the way we interact with the others. As Gustav Landauer notes: “Society is not something which can be changed by a revolution, but is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behaviour; we change it by changing our mode of relating, by behaving differently. »
(Adina Pintilie)