Who cares: encounters with the aesthetic use of thermal imaging to explore the role of touch as a signifier of care, contamination, intimacy and trust

This artists reflection will discuss the notion of environments as expressed through the use thermal technologies as a tool to create the dance-screen project Who Cares. We draw attention to the body as expanded beyond visible borders and so reimagined in painterly abstraction through heat trace. Who Cares follows earlier experiments with thermal technology (Thermal Duets 2019) but aims to reflect on care as understood post pandemic. It was initiated through interviews with NHS staff (ICU staff at Whittington Hospital) in which nurses reflected on the tensions experienced through touch as a signifier of care, contamination, intimacy and trust.
We will draw on the voices key in the making process; those of the NHS staff, the lead artists, and the dancers Alice Labant and Martina Conti. The article will also reflect on audience responses as part of Who Cares selected for ‘Wells Art Contemporary’, a major group exhibition in the cathedral itself in Aug/sept 2023. In addition, reference to recent writing such as Dahiya (2020) Phenomenology of Contagion supports the question of touch as re-figured through recent experiences.
The writing will reflect on the relay and forensics of touch, revealing our bodies as overlapping, drawing attention and giving space to these tensions. The visual capture of heat in breath, in the exchange of clothes or in the residue of touch offers the opportunity to explore the environment of the tactile, normally unseen. Experiments revealed the body as extended through time, of detail (heat) emerging and fading, of quiet attention in the presence of viewers.
In understanding the dangers of being together, but also the pressing need for human touch we as artists are interested to express the inherent tensions through the creative and poetic potential of thermal imaging technology, forging new artistic investigations for us and for the field.