Consent, Intent, & Boundaries is a series of live interactive performances exploring specific methods of touch. Live performances focus on audience interaction through guided instructions. At each performance, the artist stands in the middle of the space. A sound track at each performance guides the audience through motivations for each actions and muses on the implications within society. The audience uses pigment to mark the performer. My work employs researching, developing, and adapting sensate focused exercises to examine the nuances and politics of touching bodies through performance, video, audio recordings, social practice interventions, and instruction based art. ‘Consent, Intent, & Boundaries’ is built on the fundamental belief that human touch and contact is a catalyst for positive change. Research in both neurological and social sciences are proving that physical connection is fundamental to our development and our overall sense of well being. Utilizing multi-modal forms of connection these ideas can be democratically disseminated to the widest audiences. This allows for participants to both directly and indirectly interact with the performer and the work while being invited to interweave ideas around touch, connection, contact, and communication into their own lives.

How can art catalyze change?
I wholly and fully believe in the power of human touch and connection as a catalyst for change. Physical connection is fundamental to our wellbeing. We are instinctually programed on how to read the language of touch: Temperature, pressure, texture, and time. Within the last 5 years, the importance of human contact is being echoed in the New York Times, The Guardian, Psychology Today, The New Yorker, University publications, and more, focused on the necessity for touch in human well-being and the crisis we’re facing as our society moves away from acceptable social touch. I keep a running list of that research on my website https://narcissagold.com/links.html.