The Register of Touches consists of a guided tour of the exhibition one one zero zero one zero zero and a collective performance which comes as an extension of the site-specific installation of the artist Mihai Toth, entitled Landscape of Touch.
If in the case of the installation a conceptual map has been developed in the form of a sequential rhythm of an imagined route that is shaped around the idea of articulation and awareness of touches in the public space, through the proposed performance an archive of touches is developed by marking and validating the places, objects, materials, structures that are part of the architectural landscape of the targeted interior space, to be structured in dialogue with the touched elements of the exterior perimeter of the space.
Both the installation Landscape of Touching and the performance Register of Touches propose a network system consisting of an algorithm for the intuitive identification of unconsciously touched places in public space or in common places, with the aim of developing the level of awareness of how to relate through one's own corporeality and gesturality to the scenario of the space in which we find ourselves. Through this approach, places permanently touched involuntarily in everyday life become sculptural forms or presences through the intrinsic memory in the structure of various materials. In this exploration, touch becomes a tool used to investigate how we relate to the historical content of a space, its character and personality, but also to the social life of the space through the actions and situations that take place inside/outside it. The performative action itself involves an established route, inside the Faculty of Mechanics and in the courtyard of the building, which will be walked as a group to collect touches in the public space in the form of a collective awareness exercise.
MIHAI TOTH (b.1990) - visual artist, lives and works in Timisoara. Between 2009 and 2015 he studied at the Faculty of Construction at the Polytechnic University of Timișoara, where he defended his bachelor's and dissertation in land surveying and cadastral surveying, after which he started his studies at the Faculty of Arts and Design in Timișoara. His artistic practice is based on a multimedia approach focused on the development of different networks that investigate certain possibilities of connection between visual expression and the hermeneutics of artistic thought. The relationship constantly present in the way his projects are organized, constructed and realized is that of materiality and non-materiality, that is, exploring the possibilities of relationship and dialogue between the two situations. Another aspect of his approach lies in his affinity for exploring different mechanisms and algorithmic systems of a conceptual type that he composes in various visual frameworks from a performative position.
The main media addressed are: conceptual drawing, site-specific installation, video, photography, sound and performance. In addition to his artistic practice of a multimedia nature, he develops a particular interest in exploring forms of approach, communication and mediation of the artistic cultural phenomenon in relation to the niche audience, but also to the general social environment. At the same time, in his work he is concerned with collective referential systems in which group cooperation and coordination take precedence over individual mechanisms. He is currently a PhD student at the Faculty of Arts and Design in Timisoara, with a thesis entitled The Void - between transcendence and representation.