HANDHELD is an installation that surrounds the visitor with three-channel video, bodies, sound, movement, and tactile sculptures. Through layers of associations and imagination, the work invites reflection on the boundary between body and matter, between the living and the lifeless, play and seriousness.

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The hand is the work’s recurring figure, both concrete and metaphorical. In the encounter between hand, material, and gaze, a play of tension emerges between sensation and expectation. Touch becomes an exploratory tool that shifts perception, choreographs the gaze, and opens an imaginary space between the organic and the constructed. Through this tactile encounter, the work explores kinesthetic empathy as a relational capacity: the ability to identify with, feel for, and feel with other bodies, presences, and forms of life.

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The videos portray hands kneading, pulling, shaping, exploring, and manipulating material. In the space, the visitor encounters the sculptural bodies and traces that remain after these actions. They appear as something both familiar and strange, evoking associations with a child’s playful shaping of clay, while also resembling something fleshy, organic, and continuously transforming.

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Alongside the videos and sculptures, bodies appear in the space as active participants, creating shifting relationships between material, space, and viewer. The three performers are almost like children in a playground, testing the objects as extensions of themselves: things to carry, organize, assemble, inhabit, and transform. The objects become tools, companions, obstacles, and temporary bodies. Through play, repetition, and experimentation, distinctions between body and matter begin to blur, opening a space where material and movement continually shape one another.

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The work balances humor and depth, with a soundscape of playful drum rolls teasing the revealing “ta-da!” moment and reflecting our desire to create meaning from what we encounter. At the same time, HANDHELD asks what it means to feel with and through others, and how empathy may emerge in encounters between bodies, materials, and imagined forms of life.

 

Research for HANDHELD began during a residency at IASPIS / Konstnärsnämnden in Stockholm in autumn 2024. In April 2026, the installation was presented at Weld in Stockholm, in a version featuring three performers who were present at scheduled times during the installation’s opening hours. Visitors were free to move around the space, stand, sit, lie down, and remain for as long as they wished. The installation welcomes both children and adults.

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Artistic concept, editing and soundmix: Sara Lindström Lindhe

Performers at Weld, April 2026: Ina Dokmo, Siriol Joyner & Helena Lambert

Lighting design: Julia Pettersson

Final sound mix: Jan Carleklev

Technical support: Joakim Olsson

Supported by: Konstnärsnämnden and co-produced by Weld, Stockholm

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HANDHELD is also presented as a stand-alone videoinstallation with 3-channel video, and sculptures.

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