Which touch do we feel when we can no longer touch?

by Alberto Pereira Jr.

Documentation of a performance or document-performed? “Which touch do we feel when we can no longer touch?” it is a provocation-unfolding out of the suspension of the HIV2020 Conference resulting from the pandemic of the new coronavirus. And consequently the shift of the presentation of “Please, Touch Me,” work of the Brazilian social artist Alberto Pereira Jr., into the virtual environment. In the original work, the artist offers his self-declared black, queer and HIV positive body to the audience’s touch, in the hope that it will produce empathy, resignification, purge and cure of social stigmas. Now, a video gathers
or records the performance via live transmission and a journey of searching for new possibilities and meanings of the touch between bodies – of his HIV positive body and others as well – given the threat of physical touch imposed by the COVID-19 quarantine as recommended by the WHO. Alberto Pereira Jr. will also be a co-host of one of the “Poetics & Pandemics Curated Open Mic” sessions’, show created by Brad Walrond for HIV2020.

Duration – around 8 minutes
Created, directed and performed by Alberto Pereira Jr.
Editor: Tiago Coutinho
Sound Editor: TJ Sound
Special Thanks: HIV2020, Luv ‘til It Hurts, Paula Nishijima, Brad Walrond and Todd Lanier Lester

@albertopereirajr
Luv ‘til It Hurts interviews Alberto Pereira Jr.