One of the big challenges technology presents to intimacy and love is the question of paying attention. With the endless flow of information, constant communication and updates, we often fail to be present in the here and now. A short attention span and attention deficit are both afflictions of the digital age. But being present is a precondition for love. Accepting limitations is another. Both are under pressure from modern technology. Hannah Toticki’s work focuses on the relationship between social relations, political economy and technological developments. The works presented in the exhibition, all newly commissioned, are shaped as garments, accessories and furniture which all point to the relationship between technology and body. Their use is ambiguous – designed to help us focus, but at the same time being restraining, maybe even slightly claustrophobic. This ambiguity is a metaphor for the double nature of the endless possibilities of modern digital technology: on the one hand they are useful and facilitating communication, while on the other they are binding and alienating.

It is a technology that sets us free but at the same time challenges genuine and intimate human contact. Touch Screen Protection Rings (2019) focuses on that part of the body that normally interacts with digital devices through touch screens, functioning as a physical obstacle that protects us from our desire for constant updates. Similarly, Smart Phone Protection Glasses (2019) blocks out the part of our visual field where our smartphone would usually be held in our hand. In Focus Ware (2020), two garments are designed in such a way that the gaze, direction and bodily gesture are focused towards one another. In Digital Embrace (2020), computer keys come out of a soft woollen suit, while other keys melt together with the imprint of hands. Warm flexible skin meets cold and hard technology, and the limits between body and technology are transgressed. How is the phenomenological experience of love, care and tenderness, influenced by the physicality of technology, now that technology is an extension of the physical body?