Allan Kaprow’s 1975 project “Comfort Zones” is a study on psychological boundaries envisioned by physical space. The project sees two participants performing acts with one another that involve physically touching or almost touching, attempting to study physical boundaries and seeing if they change based on a new level of physiological comfort that is attained through repetition - cognitive exposure therapy - of being close with another person. This project was a study of the language of touch, the “love language” of engaging and proposing to - and with - others through expressive physical touch. This is something we all take for granted - physical touch as a reaffirmation of one’s existence in the world, one’s connection with another person, one’s willingness to be seen. Through the pandemic, the comfort zones of each of us were expelled, lost, as we had less physical contact than ever, while at the same time were extremely restricted through fear of being too close. As a parallel, Kaprow’s project is more relevant than ever --- how can we show physical connection with someone while also maintaining a safe physical barrier in most settings? 

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The pandemic allowed us to have a new perspective on time; forcing us to confront the spaces in between instances of touch with another person, sharing space with others. The calendar lost meaning; days were less spent clocked by hours but more spent by the connection or lack of connection with others that we experienced. We were ripped out of our comfort zones of remaining close while our comfort zones were also pitted against us; used as a tool to suffocate us and protect us from an unseen killer. Touch became the indicator of time - an interval with which we measured our days. Touch lasted 10 minutes today, today I went 10 hours without touch. It became the interval with which we naturally observed our lives. 

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Thinking about touch as an interval is a notable thought. Hasn’t it always been true about our lives? The most significant moments involve a physical feeling, a moment of touch through which we experience our lives and history. This has always been the case. Studies show that humans retain memories more clearly if an act of touch was involved; a kind of physical memory. This is so deep as to incorporate itself into our DNA - it has been proven that ancestral physical trauma is passed down through DNA for generations. Ancestors of enslaved people and survivors of the Holocaust have mutated DNA, markings showing extreme levels of trauma in our past. A physical sensation holds closer to the memories in our brains than an event without touch. We move through the world through a series of touches among friends, allies, strangers, coworkers. 

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Diane Borsato’s project “Touching 1,000 People” saw her spend a month and ten days across 2001 and 2003 touching strangers in public in Montreal. The “minimalist performance” was a study on something similar; how subtle touch can alter the well-being of a person throughout a day. Presumably, there were moments when she pushed past her own comfort zones and perhaps others’ too. The act of physically impeding upon strangers in different settings is a study that goes well with Kaprow’s project. In Borsato’s project, she inevitably witnessed different comfort zones with different people and situations. There is an invisible boundary around others when you are walking on a semi-crowded street, or when you are standing on a busy bus. Things are different in different situations; we adapt to each different situation. 

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Does this also shift among recurring characters? Are there points in which one can walk down the street and bump into a semi-stranger and become more comfortable with it over time? What about riding the bus with the same people at rush hour every day? Some days you are closer to them than others and maybe after an extended period of exposure, your boundaries become softened by repetition. Does this come from a place of human threat? Why are physical boundaries, comfort zones, and “personal bubbles” an idea in humanity anyway? Does this concept exist in nature outside of us? Yes, right?

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Perhaps it all comes down to trust. Through cognitive therapy and repetition, one can come to attempt to expect and know what will happen through the physical confrontations we experience with others in our lives. So if touch is an interval, we can think of things as touch and non-touch. This can be applied to everything in life. If we study non-touch as a way of intellectually navigating the world, we can learn to trust the things around us through better understanding the concepts of those things. On the other hand, trust through a physical sense can be maintained through practice. 

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The physical response to boundaries can be led by personal emotional and intellectual connection with another person or place and affect how we interpolate said places and feelings in our lives. A study of togetherness cannot be seen without witnessing touch as an interval, exploring this through a physical performance like “Comfort Zones” or “Touching 1,000 People”. Erin Manning’s essay called “The Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty” states that the act of touch is, “the act of reaching toward, of creating space-time… when bodies move.” Time and touch are forever entwined within the human experience. A good question to sit with is: How can we acknowledge and explore how we experience touch with the passage of time?