Studies of an Alien Skin
2016
Artist Film and Installation
Made in Collaboration with Andreas Greiner
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As the boundaries of human research approach penetration of the quantum veil, the surfaces of biological machinery reveal mysterious shapes and motions. Beyond the reach of our naked eyes, skin is a pulsating alien landscape in a state of continuous geological formation, where death is an apocalypse in slow motion. Inside the abstraction of closeness, the extra-terrestrial engulfs.
Studies of an Alien Skin is a visual exploration of this terrain and a speculative sonic realisation of its transmissions. Scanning across different sections of pulsating bodies of the Hotaru Ika—a bioluminescent cephalopod found off the coast of Japan; filmed on location beneath a microscope—the film swirls through the visual instability of matter, the empathetic projection of emotion onto non-human life, the electricity of organicity and the psychedelia of biology.
In 2017, Berlin based label Flipping the Coin released a limited edition dub-plate of the film’s soundtrack: synthesizer textures synchronized to and modulated by the pulsations and movements of the Hotaru Ika’s body.
Studies of an Alien Skin has also been presented as a live AV performance alongside video artist Judith Holzer.
It is in the collection of the Berlinische Gallery.
Commissioned by Trafo Stacija, Szczecin.
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