My research explores the unintentional subversion of the shift towards contactless living, through the lens of our own microbiota, examining the dissolution of our bodily selves on a microscopic scale. Each time we interact with public space, be it through touching, breathing, coughing or sneezing, we leave behind traces of ourselves, meaning that our physical reach does not end at our bodies. As we fall to the seduction of a contactless existence and touch is slowly removed from public life, contact by proxy remains the championing vestige of our collective intimacy.

This is especially relevant against the backdrop of the COVID-19 outbreak, in which the rise of, and to varying degrees institutionally condoned, xenophobia further stigmatised the idea of touch. The virus existed as an invisible yet personified entity, whose lack of form and complete novelty gave it an almost occult divine presence within our imaginations. When confronted with an unknown and unseen force, we subconsciously fill in the gaps within our understanding with our existing biases, oftentimes to the detriment of our civilness and moral standing. In this case the resolution at which we view the microscopic caused rationality and comprehension to become limited by the visual encryption of scale, with the microscopic world existing as its own encrypted interior.

Whilst the withdrawal of touch can stem from the fear of unseen agents, viewing them at scale and giving them tangible form sheds light on the baselessness of over-sterility. Our bodies’ microbiota simultaneously represent our own individual uniqueness and shared collectivity, existing as an invisible and unacknowledged layer of our lives and identity. In response to an increasingly pervasive visual culture, in which people, places and things are judged and compared on platforms from social media and dating sites to food delivery, we spend our lives carefully curating what we say and do to uphold an image of ourselves that we align with, yet this only exists at a visible scale. When zoomed in it becomes apparent that we have little to no agency over our microscopic selves. It is the need for physical agency that still gives touch importance within our lives, as we click, hold, push and pull on tangible objects in public space, leaving behind traces of our microbiota and allowing them to mix, mingle and remain as a new collective.

In this project I explore and reappropriate this tendency to forensically visually scrutinise by touching, swabbing, growing cultures and filming my interactions with apolitical, inoffensive and inanimate objects, which act as points of shared public touch. I examine the exchange of my own microbiota and the public’s through this repeated sequence of action, cause and effect. Whilst filming the swabbed microbes through a microscope gives more visual accuracy, growing them on a petri dish and giving them tangibility removes the visual barrier of scale, in essence decrypting the microscopic world by giving form to the formless without the need for viewing instruments. Furthermore the repetitious display of action and effect creates a predictability and mundaneness that softens the inevitable disgust conjured by the images of the grown microbe cultures. Inspired by the investigation and simultaneous portrayal of micro and macro conditions in Taloi Havini's Habitat ( 2017), I explore the potential of multiple-channel film as a means to coerce visual comparison and alternate between different visual scales. Over the course of this term I undertook weekly recordings of my interactions with public objects, in an attempt to reclaim physical touch albeit through a non-human lens.