ALASKA – Studio for Feelings investigates emotions as bodily, sensuous phenomena. We understand humans as participant in their experiential evolutions and the development of what they can feel. Feelings are trained, habituated, and valorized, incorporated into our bodies and thus enacting the normative regimes of our societies. Therefore we ask: How and to what end are we moved and touched? Our work takes the shape of environments, workshops, performances and interactive installations.
ALASKA – Studio for Feelings are Anne-Sophie Reichert and Esther Vorwerk.
ALASKA’s latest project is a PREASURE LAB [pressure, pleasure]. Inspired by the work of the US-American autism activist and animal scientist Temple Grandin, the lab investigates the effects and affects of physical pressure on the human body. Grandin built herself a hug machine when she was in college: she desired the feeling of being held yet felt overstimulated by human touch. The lab provides a number of newly designed hug machines that put pressure on different parts of the body. Visitors interact with these devices and experience the sensuous and affective changes of being cared for by a machine. The PREASURE LAB, including somatic pressure workshops for adults and hug machine building for children has been set up in Berkeley, CA in 2018 and at Kunstpunkt gallery in Berlin in 2019.
ALASKA – Studio for Feelings
instagram @alaskafeels