Drawing on insights in contemporary psychoanalytic theory, Ruby Kernkamp relies on a reading of tenderness to find spaces of trust and support between touching bodies.

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The etymological root of tenderness is the Indo-European -ten/-tan, which refers to: to stretch and be stretched (Koziej, 349). I made a movement film about tenderness using the stretching and stretchable potential of two bodies. My exploration was driven by the following research question: how can partnered movement generate relational networks based on tenderness and care? The text that anchored this work was Stephanie Koziej’s “Towards a Tender Sexuality: From Freud’s Implicit Taboo on Adult Erotic Tenderness, to the Unexplored Tender Critical Potential of Mitchell and Perel’s Clinical Practice”. Her argument in this piece is that Mitchell and Perel’s work challenges one of the axioms at the foundation of psychoanalysis: that the split between tenderness and sensuality (and the successive repression of tenderness) are necessary for the development of civilized, healthy adult sexuality. Unlike phallic selfhood, tender selfhood recognizes, allows, and even enjoys vulnerability and dependency. She argues that, through rhythmic attunement, a rhythmic third is co-created, which transcends binary complimentarity and demands us to rethink gender roles (349). I am interested in that space in between, in what can be co-created when we reincorporate tenderness into our platonic spaces, desexualize bodies touching, and push back against gendered constructions of the self. This film is an exploration of what happens in these “rare moments in which we are allowed, facilitated and cherished to momentarily become-porous and become-fluid as tender, stretching and stretchable selves’ (Koziej, 349).

The form of movement present in this film (contact improvisation) demands a near-constant attunement to my own body and to the body/bodies I am partnering. We move towards weight. Often with our eyes closed, sensing, touching only with the surface of our bodies. If someone pulls away, we often fall. It is only this moving towards, this hyper-specific bodily attunement, that will allow us to dance together. This form of partnering is also gender neutral. It is from this non-hierarchical place that we give and take support continuously, always adjusting and open to each other’s needs. In this way, through movement and bodily attunement, we created a relational network based on tenderness and care.

This movement film is in its first iteration: a kind of undone, rough transcript of bodies or, rather, an ephemeral material from which to build on in the coming years. As I integrate tenderness into my own life and movement practice more thoroughly, I hope to further investigate the subversive potential of this type of relationality. The thing I am most grateful for in doing this project is that it facilitated moments, extended and short, in which two bodies became porous and fluid as tender, stretching, and stretchable selves.

Artist Biography: Ruby Clementine Kernkamp is a writer and dancer. She holds a BA in anthropology from Columbia University. Her work focuses on the multiple entanglements between humans and their environments in the Anthropocene.