Skin represents a place where art, science, philosophy and social culture intersect. With a growing number of bodily extensions and the continuous discovery of new areas – physical, virtual and psychological – the clear distinctive lines between individuals, countries and even species are beginning to blur.

Advances in bio-medical research together with deconstruction theories in philosophy are reflected in the work of many artists using skin, materially or metaphorically, as an interface, whose work goes beyond the descriptive surface of the skin, to explore issues of xeno-transplants, trans-species and trans-racial exchanges. In recent years, a trend towards the analysis of skin, its functions and meanings, has emerged in the practice of many artists using wet biology, bio-architecture and self-experimentation.

Jens Hauser has been involved in much of the development in this area and this book provides an engaging, critical and thought-provoking approach to how current technologies are changing our perceptions of the body, the self and the interactions between bodies.

The book accompanies the landmark exhibition (of the same name) at FACT in Liverpool, within the cities year as European Capital of Culture. Hauser’s curatorial concept for the exhibition reflects that of the book, involving a multidisciplinary approach to the topic; between art, science, politics, philosophy and architecture.

CONTENTS:

Welcoming sk-interfaces to FACT
Mike Stubbs

Culturing Change
Marta Rupérez

THEORETICAL APPROACHES

Who’s Afraid of the In-Between?
Jens Hauser

The Return of Marsyas: Creative Skin
Stéphane Dumas

McLuhan and the Body as Medium
Richard Cavell

Endogenous Design of Biofacts: Tissues and Networks in Bio Art and Life Science
Nicole C. Karafyllis

Fitter, Better, Stronger, Faster
John A. Hunt

e-skin: Research into Wearable Interfaces, Cross-modal Perception
and Communication for the Visually Impaired on the Mediated Stage
Jill Scott

ARTISTIC WORKS

Feel Me, Touch Me: The hymNext Project
Julia Reodica

In the Face of the Victim: Confronting the Other in the Tissue Culture and Art Project
Adele Senior

Harlequin Coat
Orlan

Secularisme, Preface from Michel Serres, The Troubadour of Knowledge

The Fusional Haptics of Art Orienté objet
Marion Laval-Jeantet

Marsyas – besides myself
Kira O’Reilly

Extra Ear: Ear on Arm
Stelarc

The Telepresence Garment
Eduardo Kac

World Skin: A photo safari in a land of war
Maurice Benayoun

Why Immolation
Critical Art Ensemble

The Office of Experiments’ Truth Serum Threat: Notes on the Psychopharmacology of Truthfulness
Nicolas Langlitz

Wim Delvoye’s Sybille II
Ralf Kotschka

Immobile, Bleu... Remix!
Yann Marussich

Biological Habitat: Developing Living Spaces
Zbigniew Oksiuta

Light, only light
Jun Takita

The Midas Project
Paul Thomas

Re-thinking Touch
Zane Berzina

Olivier Goulet’s Skinbag Corps.EXT
Fabienne Stahl

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