Ylja Band, NO to Ticklish Laughter
Ylja Band discusses, through the example of tickling, the nuances and ambiguity of physical boundaries, the curiosity and bewilderment they evoke and the slippery slope of (non)consensual touch. The three scenarios all illustrate different moments of tickling: an SS soldier tickling a gay Jewish prisoner in a bunker of Nazi Germany, an interaction between a “ticklee bottom” and a “tickler top” in a tickling studio in America and a father tickling his young daughter in a living room in the Netherlands.