Kelsey Chen, Nicolai Dorka, Bhumikorn Kongtaveelert
Tulle, biofilm (agar agar, glycerol, water), aluminum, hand-held microscope, multifilament nylon thread, phone camera, two-channel projection
78 x 78 x 84" (195 x 195 x 240 cm)
What is most easily seen when we move through the world are surfaces–borders, which obscure the complex intermixings that belie them, and disguise our own bodies as stable objects rather than permeable territories.
Φ notices all things as soft zones, places of exchange rather than discrete, individual beings, and our skins as porous, unstable borders between materials that are always bleeding into one another. We invite you to consider your own body as atmosphere, as a dense material through which other systems, beings, and matter traverses. To consider the human as a site of transit, a gathering place territorialized by the playfulness of more-than-human and non-human beings, a scaffold where complex tapestries of interspecies relations are woven. Consider the surface of our bodies as filtration systems and constantly negotiated boundaries between interior and exterior spaces: we invite you inside of a new skin–to watch the interplay of your own shadows on the interior surface of vegetal skin, and to watch your own skin on a synthetic surface.
Inspired by Callinago and Taino buhities and shamanic medicinal practices of entoptic vision, in which new forms of perception directed towards the inside of the retina are developed by deep intersubjective relations between humans, plants, and pathogens, we invite viewers to peer inside by looking outside, as they navigate this immersive, interactive sculpture. Φ reconstitutes the human as an interstice, as a many-species-thick media, as a dense media.