The motivation for touched was simple, in that it was about the summation of our social and labouring lives together at UNSW A&D. Astrid Lorange said some beautiful and touching things about the crew that's emerged over the last couple of years, and Lev, Lachie, Nic and I joked about the necessary naming of our cohered and loose movement. Astrid Bell jokes that everyone who goes to cofa ends up making work about friendship. That you don't get it, we love friendship more than other people.

At this point in the year I've been indulging in Hardcore Leisure, and exploring the ways that builds the foundation of my collaborative and discursive practices with my best friends. Plainly, there are too many conversations at the beach or the bar that actually are the foundation of our research lead practices.

The beautiful contributions to this issue explore affect, love, touch, conversation. I solicited some pairs of people to have conversations, that resulted in the beautiful recording by Astrid and Harry, and the instructive performance score by Heath and Josie. Thank you also to Lev Kaya, who made the video background for the site on the beautiful and electrically charged shores of Little Cong Wong.