Touching Evidence: a case for sensation over representation

My article explores a small waterhole on the edge of a mountain, on an island on the edge of the world, on the boundary between urban and natural environments and how the sense of touch allows differences to meet and enter into a dialogue. Truganini Track on the edge of Hobart contentiously bears the name of Tasmania’s ‘last full blood Aboriginal’, denying the existence and ability to touch her descendants but acknowledging her previous tread and law upon this land. Using paper as a common ground between the disciplines of law and art I reveal how a haptic space exists that allows borders and boundaries between laws and systems to become porous and enter into a Deleuzian ‘becoming’. The Western Landscape tradition has privileged the gaze, allowing for the land to be possessed and appropriated for colonial interests. By challenging paper’s role as a neutral ground for meaning to be applied to, I present evidence of its transformative and multivalent possibilities offering a refusal of the normativity of representation. I deal with drawings potential seepage across boundaries to make contact with other laws inherent in the land. By placing paper in a contested zone on the fringes of urban life I build evidence of how the sense of touch challenges the normative separation of humans from the environment and its many inhabitants.