"The electricity of the touch, the stability of the hold, the freedom of letting go" Notes on Lee Su-Feh's Offering Touch Me, Hold Me, Let Me Go by Kristen Lewis
Lee Su-Feh proposes a body of work called “Touch Me, Hold Me, Let Me Go” (TMHMLMG). She positions the work as an “algorithm,” as a way of playing with the modes in which algorithmic decision-making in the “tech” world condition experience. The algorithm is, one might say, just about as close to the opposite of an actual computer algorithm as one might get, yet also emerges from the beautiful, orderly simplicity of computational syntax. Su-Feh was in residence at The Dance Centre in June 2023, and offered workshops on the work in May 2023. I was first introduced to this work when she presented it at the 2021 Dance in Vancouver Biennial, and was immediately struck by its at once radical and deeply nurturing power. I later attended a 4-day workshop she offered on the work at the end of July and beginning of August 2022. This article consists of notes I made from ‘inside’ the work, a record in words of the worlds this work unfolded in me. I am grateful to Su-Feh for the deep beauty and transformational power of this work
The work: subjective perspective As I enter this quieter part of the work, the part where we start to dance together, I am already on the brink of exhaustion—we all are. Our bodies are salt licks, record of hours of struggle we endured—and thrilled in!—to get to this point where our warm bodies start to listen for each other, start to emerge, at the teacher’s invitation, from the safety of selfhood—its absurd little dramas, its glory, its shame, its pride, its struggles. 12
Dance Central Summer 2023
As our bodies start reaching for each other, I learn in a new way the old familiar electricity of the touch; I learn to distinguish this from the solidity of the hold, to sense for the beautiful point at which a touch wants to become a hold, when a hold craves release into the exquisite freedom of the moment when I— or you—say “let me go” and we do, without hesitation and without complaint. From the vast chambers of our solitude, we listen for the next invitation, arising from ourselves or from each other or from the space itself—we