Oscillating between vitality and instrumentality, the hand both embodies and challenges key notions of aesthetics: To what extent does the production of art require the work of hands? And, vice versa, to what extent does an artwork enable a tactile understanding of the world? At the beginning of the twentieth century, hands become an agent, holding at bay technological progress and its implications for artistic creation. Regina´s book project Manipulations. Hands at Work in European Modernism reassesses the manifold ways in which the hand emerges in literature and the visual arts in early modernism. The hand revises the genealogy of modern media, which are no longer defined as pure technological innovation. Instead, they are deeply informed by the human body as the primary tool for creating a work of art.
