Alessia Arcuri and Pia Grizzuti (2026) On touching. Photo: Carmen Gray



On Touching

Workshop
with Pia Grizzuti, October 2025
Chisenhale Dance Space

“When two hands touch, there is a sensuality of the flesh, an exchange of warmth, a feeling of pressure, of presence, a proximity of otherness that brings the other nearly as close as oneself. Perhaps closer. And if the two hands belong to one person, might this not enliven an uncanny sense of the otherness of the self, a literal holding oneself at a distance in the sensation of contact, the greeting of the stranger within?” 

Karen Barad
On Touching: The Inhuman That Therefore I Am


An experiential session exploring touch and language, a practice of embodying text through sensorial exploration. It proposed touch as a site of encounter with the self, others, and text, asking how language can be experienced in its materiality through somatic practices. Through these practices, it asks: how does meaning shift when language is not only spoken, but embodied and heard in the absence of sight?

The session was facilitated together with Pia Grizzuti, who explores and researches intimacy, sexuality, and relationality through performance, experimental video, and ritual-driven practices. They are a member of Observatorio del Placer and have worked extensively in projects on ethical porn, kink, and sexuality.

















Body Language: Broken Printer
Workshop, ICA, London



Q: What is lost in translation?
Performance (2024) with Orientale Sarda, presented at Voila Festival 



Autocoscienza Writing Group
Collective (2022 – ongoing)
Working with and promoting the work of Italian feminist and writer Lea Melandri, the collective explores experiential writing as a practice of autocoscienza (consciousness raising) using group readings and writing as a tool for collective sharing, analysis and care.



Somatic Publishing (2023) 
Kingston School of Art, 
with John Philip Sage

Five weeks module focusing on the relationship between interpretative strategies, performance and performativity, as well as publishing and embodied form of knowledge production and dissemination.


Evening Class
Collective (2018–2021)
Collective experimenting with self-organised
education and design practice, through public
workshops, talks and debates, reading groups, radio broadcasting, performances, walks, and publishing. Through these activities, we have worked on developing a curriculum of both theory and practice.



DRAMA
Workshop series (2021–2023)
with John Philip Sage


Non-virtuoso exploration of how text can be activated, and its reception affected, through voice, sound, movement, space and collectivity.