Not so Flesh Story

Opening: 24 01 18H
Open: 25–27 01 2024 10–18H

 

“When I first met them, I wasn’t quite sure how to behave. They touched me almost everywhere, probing where they could best fit in. In different compositions, situations, placements. I immediately flushed; my blood began to pulse harder. Faster. The heat completely enveloped me as it came close to pouring out of my pores. I tried to cool myself with the freezing air squeezing in through the gaps in the windows and doors, but it didn’t work this time. The odourless metal tip of the cannula pierced my skin. The warm moisture of my body burst out through the wound to cover the entire floor. With a slight sheen, I could no longer hide my flush. A sumptuous puddle of colour could now be seen by all; it had entered their minds through their retinas. My exposed inner body had adapted to their bodies, carnal, dense, and vertical. We became one, both uneasy and fiercely alluring. I could even find a strip of my own skin, fragmented and fluid, constructed as a representation of my own flesh on a piece of such a cold (cold!) and sterile slab.

You know what they say. It all started with Aion holding a Möbius strip, and then it all went downhill. Or to be more precise – all downloop. Eternal recurrence, simulacra, hyperreality, ideality. On that flat screen, that is forensic evidence. Look. They operated on me, dissected me, took my memory, including the blind spots. Can you tell where one corporeality ends and another begins? No, neither can I. This is silly. An Ouroboros eating its own tail, silly. Professor Gilles says that we know nothing about a body until we know what its affects are – how they can or cannot enter into composition with other affects. I mean with the affects of another body. Either to destroy the body or to be destroyed by it. Either to exchange actions and passions with it or to join with it in composing a more powerful body. As on the surface of that canvas’s skin. With dust flying in the cavities. With the sound of tires screeching on gravel and sand. With suns and moons above.

But we are at ease now. I guess this is the way it’s going to be for some time to come. Amorphous, thick, visceral, and detailed.”

 

Text: Berlinskej model