In an automated world the mutated body - an interface with the possibility for error - is pushed to the limits of the creative working process, having only the opportunity to give little inputs within the chain-reaction of systems, and on the other hand, to receive only outputs.
The body is the bridge connecting different machines, a sender of impulses where the interaction with the surrounding world is cut down to the primitive handling of a joystick, pressing a single key on the keyboard or stimulating sensors. The world is being programmed at a very different place.
Like an empty form it seems to exist as nothing more than hands, ears, mouth, feet, and eyes. Hand-mouse, foot-pedal, finger-keyboard, eye-screen, sense-sensors: these are perfekt binomials of dependency, of an "interpassive" relationship with the world in which freedom of choise is a myth because the decision actually only be made within a limited menu of alternatives. Hautnah (Skintight) or "The Artist's Skin" focuses on the subjekt of the body itself, to be more precise, the outermost border, the external shell: the skin that filters, regulates and sometimes determines the entire network of relationships and exchange with the surrounding world, defines the contours of the image which is reproduced on the other person's retina.
Playing with the thought of slipping out of my own skin for just a moment and offering it to someone else, brought me to this idea: to make a suit out of my own two-dimensional picture, which offers another the opportunity to go through the world hidden within the "Artist's Skin".
In order to realise the clothing of my own skin, I put photographs of my body into the computer digitally and then processed them, formed them, cut them so that they fit into the dress-pattern of a suit. Thus it was possible to remodel the two-dimensionality into a three -dimensional body form in the tradition of the ancient art of tailors. Through this process and the use of electronic medium, the body becomes a virtual entity, a data landscape, a digital abstraction.
Hautnah is an hommage to the body, both forgotten and celebrated, repeated obsessively and iconically as a two-dimensional picture in a dematerialized, transformed message of itself in our information age.
(Frankfurt 1995)
Participants in this installation
in the Sindelfingen Gallery: Nico Reichelt (Assistant), Ruby Wambold (tailor);
in addition, thanks to the people at the Institut für Neue Medien
Frankfurt, the Sindelfingen City Gallery, and Pfaff, Stuttgart.
Translation by Rebekah Edminster
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Esposizione Impraticabile();
Mare();
The Negated Room();
Hautnah
Touch Me;
Stoffwechsel;
Il Sarto Immortale();
Net-Works();
History();
Imprint;