Presentation feedback - 13/03/18

After presenting my work so far to my mentors and peers yesterday I have some further ideas and thoughts about the project. I want to try using the skin to cover further objects - particularly a nicer chair, as the one I used before was very basic. After I explained my idea of making a tent out of skin, we also discussed how people make 'dens' in their rooms when they are young, out of duvets and blankets and chairs. I liked this idea, as I was originally envisioning a teepee-style tent, which might wrongfully spark implications of particular cultures such as native Indians. Instead, a 'den' makes the viewer think of their youth when they likely made structures in their own rooms, thus bringing the theme of body image to a younger demographic too. Furthermore, these 'dens' are meant to be a safe place, warm and cosy and a hiding spot from the real world. This is ironic as in my project, making the den out of skin and filling it with implications of body image and appearance actually resembles the fact that really we should all focus more on the real world and less on our own aesthetic opinions or issues. This insinuates that the worry about appearance has penetrated even into our safe places and under our skin. I was pleased to hear I could use a room at uni to make a very large sheet of latex skin.  

Sebastiane reinforced Eva Hesse's motto of letting the work speak for itself rather than worrying about meaning and concepts. He and Sharon also relieved my apprehension about how much my idea has developed and how I'm concerned that I won't come to a final decision that I'm 100% happy with because my idea seems to change every day. Sebastiane simply asked me 'but is it better?' I think, looking back at my initial starting point, that my project has come on leaps and bounds in terms of concept, material, experimentation, and final outcome. Although it is frustrating that I can't seem to settle on one final idea, Sharon reassured me that all artists are never 100% happy and that they will always find problems and see room for improvement, and that it is only the deadlines we are set that force us to be okay with our work as it stands at that moment. 


Sebastiane also suggested I look at Steven Connor's The Book of Skin. While written from a philosophy point of view, and therefore a little more abstract and confusing, it raised some interesting points and encouraged me to think about new aspects. It also reinforced ideas I was already working on.

The Book of Skin - Steven Connor:

Relevant quotes of inspiration: 

• (From an Amazon description of the book:) '“The Book of Skin" shows that skin has never been at once so manifest and so in jeopardy as it is today, when, as Marshall MacLuhan puts it, each of us wears all of mankind as his skin.'

• (From the book:) 'Since human beings have their skins on display, and since their skins display so openly and copiously the signs of their health or disease, it is no surprise that there are strong negative as well as positive feelings attaching to the visible condition of the skin.'
• 'Skin markings, especially when they are associated with disease, have the flagrancy of the blatant; they blurt out what the tongue might prefer to keep decently veiled. They are shameful and disgusting, not only because they inspire fear, but also because they are shameless.'
• 'If the skin has become more than ever visible it is as the visible object of many different forms of imaginary and actual assault: tattooing, piercing, scarification, suntanning, bondage fashions that appear to cut into or segment the skin, images of calcified, metallized or mineralized skin, along with the infliction of various kinds of disfiguring marks, actual and cosmetic.'
• 'It is what we see and know of others and ourselves. We show ourselves in and on our skins, and our skins figure out the things we are and mean: our health, youth, beauty, power, enjoyment, fear, fatigue, embarrassment or suffering. The skin is always written: it is legendary.'
• '‘The skin has been broken’ (in that curious English idiom which suggests a desire to see the skin not as a fabric, of which we should say it is torn or ripped, but a hardened shell or membrane;).'

Following the presentation, feedback and further research, I began to draw diagrams to help me envision my final outcome better. 

'Viewing' chair, table and monitor playing film. Computer hidden under table.

Sheet of skin laying over the objects making a den, supported by two chairs on either side of the table.  The skin will stretch out to wrap around and contain the external 'viewing' chair too.

Front view of den with chairs on either side of table supporting latex skin sheet. Table with monitor on will also be covered in skin to hide computer underneath.

Possible addition of photographs of bodies and skin hanging from inside the den. 

Front view with 'viewing' chair included.