I am a hand with six fingers with webs in between. Instead of fingernails I have petite, sharp, sweet-toothed little tongues with which I lick the world.
Jan Švankmajer, Self-portrait, 1999 (2002, 6)

Jan Švankmajer’s animated films are renowned for their tactile dimensions. Heads devour one another in devastating conversations, objects collide painfully with mismatched intentions, lovers’ bodies melt into one in a tender embrace (Dimensions of Dialogue, 1982). A master at extending filmic experience to include tactile as well as audiovisual sensations, Švankmajer also offers us a unique vision of the communicative powers of touch. We can draw this insight out if, instead of observing Švankmajer as a filmmaker whose movies work at a tactile level, we regard him as a Czech Surrealist for whom touch is indispensable. Although Švankmajer is best known for his films, the vitality of touch in his creative practice is most apparent in a range of static artworks and poems made during a period (1974 -1983) in which he experimented intensively with tactile experience.

Commentators have made reference to this interlude when noting how touch is integral to Švankmajer’s films. However, film/animation scholars have not studied the tactile experiments as artworks in their own right, nor has their intrinsic value to the artist been analysed in detail. Naturally enough, film/animation scholars are more interested in observing the application of his tactile experiments in his films. If, however, we focus on Švankmajer’s turn from film to tactile art (instead of the other way round) we discover a more remarkable objective. In his tactile experiments Švankmajer animates with touch, in the same way as he animates with a camera (or a pen, or a puppet). His aim is to liberate tactile perception as a means of poetic expression.


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