Hsinyun Tsai

Free Touch is an ongoing artistic practice initiated by artist Chou Kuan Jou, exploring the boundaries between the body and space. Set in public spaces such as plazas, stadiums, parks, or markets, the project invites strangers to engage in one-on-one, consensual touch to ask: What is public touch? Since 2024, Free Touch has traveled through four countries and 16 locations, engaging 60 participants.

Through touch among artist, participant, bystander, and site, Free Touch opens a way, via the sensory perception of skin, to shape or dissolve boundaries. It manifests a presence that exceeds the here and now, opening a blurred space within the public sphere, one that holds both public gaze and private exploration. The flesh, as a convergence of time and space, mirrors the public realm itself. In asking what public touch means, the work also asks: How do I exist in relation to it?

Concept & Performance: Chou Kuan Jou