Magic of the Hands

Can I perceive the world through touch? Can I trust my hands? Magic of the Hands is a tactile installation for curious fingers and unbelieving eyes. Jo Bannon opens a magic box full of conjuror’s tricks and, in this extraordinary format of a touch tour*, shows how blind and visually impaired people find their way around the world using senses other than sight. How can we disrupt the hierarchy of vision as the primary sense through which we experience both art and the world? In the most delightful way, Jo Bannon invites us take a leap of faith, trust what we can’t see and slide our hand under a velvet curtain. Behind the curtain, objects, materials and matter wait to be touched. A voice guides our hands as we touch and explore, while the ASMR sounds of the objects makes our skin tingle. In Magic of the Hands, we see through sound, touch and description, and experience a performance where we shouldn’t trust our eyes (or our ears)…

* A touch tour is usually held before a performance with audio description for blind and visually impaired members of the audience. The tactile tour provides context about the show and allows blind and visually impaired members of the audience to familiarise themselves with the design of the space, costumes and props before the show itself.

Jo Bannon lives in the UK and works in the fields of performance, choreography and live art. Her artistic work explores the themes of identity, sensory perception and human interaction. She explores the ways in which our physical bodies experience the world around us and how these sensory experiences can be mediated or challenged. Drawing on the reality of her life as a disabled woman with albinism, Jo Bannon aims to decode and reinterpret the complexity of our immediate sensory perceptions. In 2023, Jo Bannon was already a guest at the Festival Theaterformen with the performance Thank You Very Much by Claire Cunningham.