10th Festival of Abstract Thought 🗓️ October 22-26, 2025, Jazdów Estate, Warsaw FROM THE BELLY. Body, corporeality, materiality. Program here: https://www.fma.waw.pl/ Meeting - no registration required What does it mean to touch? Introduction to tactile anthropology 🕒 Wednesday, 22.10.2025 🕒 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM Rotational House of Culture no registration required Touch is considered the mother of the senses. It is touch, along with the organ that is skin, that is the first sense to develop in the womb, and as such, it is the most essential for life. Deprived of sight, hearing, smell, or taste, we can function in the world. However, we cannot survive when most of our skin remains untouched. Thus, only by being touched – touched to the core, moved and disturbed – can we live. The lecture aims to present the basic categories in the study of the sense of touch, a sense that connects us with otherness, both individually and globally. Maciej Topolski – writer, translator, anthropologist. He has published poetry volumes na koniec idą (2017, nominated for the Gdynia Literary Award 2018) and LUXUS (2019). For his prose book Niż (2020), he received the Kraków UNESCO City of Literature Award 2020, and was nominated for the Witold Gombrowicz Award 2021 and the Conrad Award 2021. He is a laureate of the Mitacs Globalink Research Award (2019), thanks to which he conducted research at Concordia University in Montreal. He translated two books by Anne Carson: the verse novel Autobiography of Red (2022, Wisława Szymborska Award 2024) and the collection Decreation. Poems, Essays, Opera (2024). He has also translated texts by Michel Serres and June Jordan. His texts – essays, interviews, articles – have been published in numerous Polish magazines (“Tygodnik Powszechny”, “Przekrój”, dwutygodnik.com, “Teksty Drugie”, “Widok”, “Konteksty”). He holds a PhD in humanities and is a marathon runner. EVENT ACCESSIBILITY Meetings are held at the Rotational House of Culture, which is accessible for people with mobility disabilities. We organize translation of meetings and lectures into Polish Sign Language (PJM). If you need PJM translation, please submit your request here by 19.10. Link: https://forms.gle/EuJbZdYSDV7UzwVt7 The project is co-financed by the City of Warsaw Funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Fund for the Promotion of Culture – a state special-purpose fund. Organizing body: Open Wild Elderberry Association Our socials: - FB: https://www.facebook.com/fma.waw - IG: @festiwalmysliabstrakcyjnej