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LAUREN REA
Christmas Project: The Skin Deep Experiment
As stated, The Skin Deep Experiment Explores the body as a breathing, living fabric or material. This was achieved through the use of both stills and video; the stills demonstrate a sense of suspension, which is recreated within the video using audio - The ringing sound creates a sense of endlessness and isolation. It was unintended to use film, and yet, after much consideration, it made sense that to develop the essence of a "living fabric" it would be done most sucessfully through recording, whilst the use of black and and white creates a tonal effect, taking it further away from skin and closer to fabric. The concept of a video was largely inspired by Acconci, however, my piece deals with a person's relationship with their body, reflecting a westernized society where beauty is warped by Photoshop and a narrow view of expectations that are unattainable for the masses, regardless of gender. The anonymity of the body could also speak for the ambiguity of gender, forging connections to the audience by making them question, first, who is it? - and secondly, if it is more than one person.
go to https://www.instagram.com/p/BOQP_cWDQLq/ to watch the full video
The Skin Deep experiment Explores the body as a breathing, living fabric or material. I intended to explore this through the media of photography, however, the essence of skin being a living organism in and of itself was more effectively demonstrated through video. Themes of the relationship between the body and the mind and the physicality of the body are rather explicit. I used myself as the subject so as to express my own body image and in an attempt to tackle these insecurities.
After exploring performative artists such as bobby baker and martha rosler, I came across Vito Acconci and his work entitled "Trademarks" from 1970. Vito Acconci was born in 1940 and is an American architect, performance and installation artist. This piece was not created in front of an audience, but in front of a camera where the artist contorted into poses and bit his arms, legs and shoulders, leaving marks in his skin. This piece was meant to
criticize the economic state of the country - referring to the commercial practice of branding. Despite the fact that it was a video, photo-documentation is an element that cannot be ignored as it changes the experience of the viewer, as well as the presentation of the piece. It is a representational device that creates an even more explicit element of masochism as the artists bitten body incorporates the viewer's sense of touch, developing a sense of disgust. This demonstrates a connection with the artist, creating the illusion of such closeness through the photographed skin.
Artst Research
Experiments
In Regards to a cit, I found this project to be successful as far as what I wanted it to achieve when connecting to an audience. Of course, this piece was meant to objectivize the human skin as a material. However, we cannot deny that it is in fact skin, and as such, is represented in its most basic form; this could create feelings of a deeply subjective nature as body image and how we view bodies is still a taboo topic; a viewer could easily feel disgust or pleasure at looking at this work. The representational elements of this experiment are still uncertain: do I project the video, should I present the stills with the audio? Personally, I feel the video is better as the work evolved organically from the stills and so should be permitted to take this form.
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