Jens Hauser”s presentation in Aix en Provence (part 1)

On Wednesday afternoon, last week, curator Jens Hauser gave us the low-down on the upcoming SK-INTERFACES exhibition which will take place on 1st Feb - 30th March in the framework of Liverpool 2008 European Capital of Culture. A skin jacket by Olivier Goulet whose work will be part of SK-INTERFACES

The event will demonstrates how artists today are artists using skin, materially or metaphorically, as an interface, and going beyond the descriptive surface of the skin, to explore issues of xeno-transplants, trans-species and trans-racial exchanges.

After an era of de-materialization (”everything digital”), contemporary art is showing a tendency of phenomenological re-materialization, a re-integration of corporality. Besides, instead of representing objects, graphic depictions or simulations, the art is gearing towards transformational processes with performance characteristics. Lastly, as the creation of the new Hybrid Art Category at ars electronica this year demonstrated, the existing categories are not sufficient anymore to represent the current state of technology-based art.

SK-INTERFACES is not about interfaces as we know them, nor is it about art on the skin. Instead, the exhibition aims to raise questions such as: What happens when we abolish surfaces? The cosmetic industry represent the skin as something which has only 2 dimensions, it is a surface for inscription. What is the third dimension hidden beneath the smooth surface? What does the interface become, if we leave behind the traditional man-machine mechanisms?

Hauser showed us a fascinating 5 minute video of a performance where dancer Yann Marussich uses his body as an interface. Bleu Provisoire performance takes the audience to a journey through the skin, which the spectators traverse with their eyes. The dancer remains motionless, like a sculpture, during one hour. The dance is made by blue secretions which gradually come out of the artist”s body as he sweats. The blue is used here to deviate from the idea of the red blood linked to man.

Science and new technologies have modified the way we perceive the skin. Examples: The Victimless Leather Jacket,

Image from Organ Farm

Xenotransplantation There are a few examples of patients who needed liver transplants and were able to use pig livers as “bridges” to hold them over until human transplants were found (porcine liver perfusion). The liver of the patient was kept outside the body in a plastic bag and hooked up to the main liver arteries. In a case like this one, the skin doesn”t fulfill its traditional role of barrier between the inside and the outside.

Stelarc“s Suspension performances (which involved having his naked body carried around suspended in the air by inserting fishhooks into his skin) also go beyond the idea of skin as a surface. His performances materialize two fantasies: the masochist phantasm of having one”s body skinned and the one of having one”s body duplicated. In Suspension, the body is not limited to the skin anymore.

Two works by Irish performanace artist Kira O”Reilly emerged after a residency at Symbiotica inthewrongplaceness. She worked with newly dead pigs used for medical research. After the scientists had put the pig to into a non-recoverable anaesthetic and had taken the animal”s lungs, she took a biopsy of the pig’s skin from which to cultivate skin cells in vitro, in preparation to work from a biopsy of her own body’s skin (more in Leonardo Electronic Almanach).

Some of the works which will be part of SK-INTERFACES:

- Maurice Benayoun“s 1997 installation World Skin. The piece while based on digital technology, searches to grab some materiality. Equipped with cameras visitors are invited to become a tourist in the Land of War. They move through a 3D space made of photographs and news images which presents a universe imbued by mute violence. When they «shoot» a snapshots, visitors can see that the topics are extracted from the universe of the installation. Visitors may take home the prints of their «Safari».

- Wim Delvoye“s video Sybille II. The magic of the work lies in the use of extreme close-ups which turns the surface of the skin into a 3D landscape. That video is probably the most disturbing work i”ve seen in a long time.

Culture de Peaux d”artistes/see also Skin Culture

- Art oriente Objet (interview) will also be showing some pieces in Liverpool.

Polyacrylamide gel prototype of hymen construct with unisex cut-out

- Julia Reodica“s hymNext Designer Hymen Project, unisex hymens sculpted with living materials and the artist’s body cells into a variety of designs for the application upon the human body (Adam Zaretsky my favourite “bioart punk” had it installed on one of his nostrils).

- Neal White will show a new piece.

Photo credit: Tim Wetherell & Stelarc

More skin-related works highlighted during the talk:

Stelarc”s Partial Head, a work which plays on the idea of confusing the surface and the interface. The artist”s face was scanned then digitally transplanted over a hominid skull, constructing a Third Face, one that becomes post-hominid and pre-human in form, referring to the theory of evolution but going backwards. The data was used to print a scaffold of ABSi thermal plastic, using a 3D printer. The scaffold was seeded with living cells. The life-support system of the partially living portrait was a custom engineered bioreactor/incubator and circulatory system which immersed the head in nutrient kept at 37 C. The Partial Head became contaminated after one week.

Image by Lisbeth Klastrup

Since 2003, French artist Orlan is working on The Harlequin Coat, an organic patchwork created with skin cells cultivated in vitro, taken from the artist and from people with various skin colour and origin. When the artist ordered the cells online, she realized that the racial category is still in use in databanks, although the cells are the same as epidermis do not contain the melatonin (the hormone that affects skin pigmentation). This prototype of a biotechnological coat, consisting of in vitro skins in petri dishes, symbolise cultural crossbreeding and hybridization. Harlequin Coat seeks to raise various questions: “Can skins of different colours be cultivated? What kind of information can be obtained from the donors? Can a person still be the owner of his or her cells? Does self-ownership continue to exist at the fragmented level? How are such issues perceived in various countries, and especially in the context of a non-western viewpoint?”

Bio-Kino, The Living Screen.

Zane Berzina“s Touch Me Wallpaper printed with thermochromic ink, so its colors lighten with heat — via a hand or a radiator.

Zbigniew Oksiuta“s futuristic dwellings which act as living and autonomous bioreactors.

Melatonin Room, by Swiss architects Jean-Gilles Decosterd and Philippe Rahm.

The Telepresence Garment, conceived by Eduardo Kac to allow its wearer to be in the skin of someone else.

Some of the books Jens Hauser recommended: François Dagognet, La peau découverte; Christophe Dejours, Le corps entre biologie et psychanalyse; Didier Anzieu, Le Moi-peau.

I never write about job offers but this doesn”t mean that i can”t make an exception.

Mediamatic is probably the most dynamic and interesting place i”ve had the opportunity to visit ever since i started to be interested in media art and interaction design. Lucky you, they are hiring!

Based in Amsterdam, Mediamatic organize salons, exhibitions, workshops, lectures and manifestations. They also design websites, software and new media applications for clients.

The web designer and front end developer gigs are for english / german speaking people, for the others (web editor, fund raiser, project leader) they are looking for someone with a good understanding of Dutch. They have several internships for English speaking students as well.

Mediamatic-related posts: Night Garden, Music with cars or trains attached, Flesh and blood avatars, Fleshing Out, interface-free media player.

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There’s a new Bud Light commercial featuring a TV news team about to begin a broadcast. This spot is entirely obvious in its “humor,” but that’s not my gripe. Instead, it’s this: As they’re about to go on the air, the anchorman eyeballs someone off camera pouring a Bud Light, and says, “Man, that looks refreshing.” This line sets the table for the ensuing laff riot. But I don’t care about any of that. I’m stuck back where the guy actually says the word “refreshing” as he ogles the beer. Really? Refreshing? Whatz!?

If the line was delivered with irony, or the guy was supposed to be a one-dimensional geek who talked like that, okay. But neither possible justification applies. The only reason he says “refreshing” is that this word is apparently the official descriptor for Bud Light these days.
Coming out of the mouth of an announcer, the word, though artificial, stiff and worn flat by its
overuse in beer commercials for so many decades, would at least be in character. An announcer, after all, is supposed to spew the product blah blah, largely so that the characters in the spot aren’t burdened with that chore, so their dialogue can rise above such banality and aspire to being something approaching real, natural or at least not straight from the brief.

“Refreshing” is the kind of word you would expect to come out of the mouth of a P&G mom in the ‘70s. Perhaps this once celebrated brand should go back to fart jokes and leave funny dialogue to the guys who used to write Bud Light spots back when they were funny. Oh wait. They’ve all retired or are writing sitcoms.

to the Advertising for Peanuts upgrade package. We’re back with a new look, new writers and a fresh format. Now, if you have been a Peanuts regular for the past couple years I’m going to warn you, this blog has changed. And if you’re new to the site, well, what do you care? Enjoy.

Here’s the deal: For the past two years I have been posting and commenting on the advertising work I found to be smart, surprising, and inspiring (check the archives). Well guess what, since I started doing that, about umpteen hundred other people started doing the same thing.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the ad blogosphere is starting to feel like being inside a creepy advertising house of mirrors. Everyone ends up pointing to the same work. And you start to see the same stuff over and over again. Well, I got tired of my blog looking like all the other blogs. So, I’m not posting new work anymore. Believe me, there are plenty of other outstanding sites you can go to get your new work fix. (I’ll even recommend a few)

So what now? Instead of a posting a new ad every day and a quirky comment, you will find a short, thoughtful column in its place, written by a different advertising big-brain for every day of the week. That’s right, 7 columns in 7 days. Check out the column topics and the new authors to the right, and their bios below. It’s a diverse group. And we intend on tackling the biz from both it’s pretty and it’s ugly sides.

The new Advertising for Peanuts is a place for opinions, and discussions and insight. It’s not about rushing to post the newest work before anyone else does. Instead, the 7 of us will take our time and think of something interesting to say. Because if we can’t do that, we rather say nothing at all.

We welcome your comments, insults and complaints. Whatever gets the conversation going. Whatever changes things up a bit. Whatever keeps you coming back.

Monday
BIO: Jim Morris, The Communicaterer, is a hardwired contrarimudgeon who loves advertising, the persuasive art, and hates advertising, the business. He holds no interest in the blahgosphere.

As both copywriter and creative director, Jim Morris has been creating evocative, highly human, award-winning advertising for twenty five years.

Armed with a degree in philosophy and an unnatural fondness for hippos, Jim served time, full time, at several ad agencies. For most of the past 15 years He has enjoyed a thriving freelance copywriting business. Jim also taught copywriting at Columbia College for 12 years and wrote a monthly column for Screen for five years.

Jim’s accomplishments include authoring dozens of successful taglines (his specialty), including“We are Flintstones Kids, Ten Million Strong and Growing,” the cornerstone of one of the longest-running campaigns of the last half century; and creating an international branding campaign for Lions Clubs International, from tagline through TV.

Some of Jim’s work can be seen on his website, www.communicaterer.com.

Tuesday

BIO: