Untouchable things		 			      

Untouchable are things immanent and near – the things we think we know – that still remain separated from us. Things can remain untouchable because they are beyond conceptual grasp, impermissible by law or tradition, religious taboos or simply because they are unremembered in historical selection.

In life touch and distance alternate. We stay “in touch” with those we like. We also stay “in touch with things” – to be up to date, on the cutting edge, on the pulse of the times. New technology has made it possible for us to reach our loved ones far away. Mobile phones have reduced distance just as photography has defied the passage of time. These illusory movements – sometimes both at the same time – have placed distance and time at our convenience. 

Maybe they have also strengthened our desire to overcome distance. Philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy has written that there is something sacred in all images. It is part of their allure. Here sacred is not primarily religious, or even related to faith. Instead it signifies precisely that which is separate, set apart. It is not as much a relation or a bind as it is a cut. Hence images are distinct, and cannot be properly touched – or can only be touched from a distance without contact.

In the Western (Christian) tradition touching is strongly related to the sacred. Distance, separation and innocence find their meaning only in relation to contamination and conquest.  Western tradition (and our world today) is impregnated by the ideas of longing for innocent, natural and untouched territories –  for places of the real world and of virtual worlds. Migration, the sustained dream of homecoming, has made these desires visible in a new way, all around us. 

Photographs are akin to ancient parables in the sense that they deal with the relation of image and seeing, where this relation is principally not one of imagination but of participation and penetration – as Jean-Luc Nancy says – methexis in mimesis. Images are similarly tautegorical. They do not “carry” messages in the traditional sense: there is nothing for those not willing to hear or see, but plenty for those with open minds; a willingness and ability to see (to believe, if you will). 
 
The yearning for contact – desirable or violent – is a very basic human force. It remains almost neutral up until the point it becomes a strike or a caress. Always ambiguous, a threat to bodily integrity, a promise of bliss. And not all things move and touch us. 

Being untouched can also signal determination and artistic integrity. The way in which an artist will not sway – will stay on course, even when it means being “out of touch”. Sometimes world events and limits are incommensurable with personal experience.  

Childhood has a privileged, even determinative, connection to untouchability and innocence. The ideal childhood:  a magic time of play and reverie, a secure place for identity construction. But it is not only innocence for all. Childhood can also be a time of exploitation, trauma and crisis. The young are vulnerable to cultural imposition, be it the harshness of tradition, poverty and child labor or the demands of consumer society and media imagery. Childhood is aligned with tradition and resists it. Childhood exits in the adult mind and desire: as a memory, as a creative force, as a locus of gender identity construction, as an eternal dream of youth, as a dream of eternal youth. Youth is a time of metamorphosis:  continuously transformed, diluted and redefined – an experience shared by all – yet private, unknown, untouchable.

“The Spells of Childhood” -exhibition presents this core of Backlight 05. It pursues the ideas of youth –  its pain and its lure. Alongside it – and of equally great import – the other exhibitions open wider thematic vistas to related issues of untouchability and to the transient conditions of the photographic medium.