skin

issue 8 spring-summer 2013

Contents
Cover Image: Te Feature (Isabelle) by ALICE WHITE
Untitled Image by ALSSANR R!PAN p. 4
Editorial by JD TAYLOR p. 5
Acts of Estrangement: Reading the Psoriatic-Skin by TRISH MCTIGHE, with images by TOM
MOORE pp. 615
Super 8 by HEDI EL KHOLTI pp. 1625
Northumbrian Psycho. Interview with STEWART HOME by NICHOLAS GLEDHILL, with
images by PAUL STAXX SPRAGET pp. 2639
Eating Skins: Paper, Ink & Flesh in 6 courses by TRACI KELLY pp. 4049
Like Faces Seen in Dreams by ALISTAIR CARTWRIGHT pp. 5055
Tose arent my parents by TOM MORTIMER pp. 5658
Encountering the skins of Black Swan and Te Skin I Live In by KATHLEEN SCOTT, with images
by GEISTE MARIJA KINCINAITYTE pp. 5971
Between Dialectics and Deconstruction. Interview with CATHERINE MALABOU by MARK
RAINEY, with images by EMILY SPEED pp. 7281
Transmasculinities by FINN JACKSON BALLARD, with additional image by LIZ ROSENFELD
pp. 8293
K Draws a Plum by MIRA MATTAR, with images by REBECCA FOSTER pp. 94102
Beauty Marked by GEMMA PARKER p. 103
Lightning Flowers by GIULIA MORUCCHIO & MARTA MUSCHIETTI pp. 104106
A Conversation with Federico Campagna by K\!N V. ML!N, with images by ALICE
WHITE pp. 107117
Working on Skin by PHIL SAWDON pp. 118119
Someones Always Missing Somewhere by INGE HOONTE pp. 120124
Te Common Skin - A phantasmatic image in psychoanalysis by NADINE HARTMANN pp. 125129
Skingraphs by SLAVA MOGUTIN and BRIAN KENNY SUPERM pp. 130135
Tattoo Virus: AIDS Representation on the Skin by RICHARD SAWDON SMITH pp. 136146
Visible Unseen by REGINA AGU pp. 147154
4
Image by
ALESSANDRO RIPANE
Portfolio: http://alessandroripane.com
5
Te poet Federico Garcia Lorca once wrote that only mystery makes us live.
Strange then that, for a neoliberal era determined to penetrate and commercially recuperate every outside zone,
something so close to the bone as skin, that hypersensory border between self and the world, remains sufused with mystery.
Te skin, like the mind, never presents itself as a blank canvas. From the outset it is determined by external identity
markers like gender or race. It is disciplined by shifing social defnitions of health or beauty; it is clothed, marked or
pierced, subjected to various regimes of hygiene. Skin is the most ubiquitous signifer of self-as-object. Yet skin is also the
interface of human embodiment, the sensory envelope of our comfort and identity, defning pleasures and pains within the
world. Tis troublesome, protective and unstable expanse is a continual texture of confict, compelling to touch.
For its eighth issue, Nyx, a Noctournal called on theorists and artists to investigate Skin. We present a series of new work
tackling sexuality, gender, afect, pornography, love, self, the ego and the other, as well as more that slips categorisation. We
interview the writer Stewart Home, and the philosopher Catherine Malabou, on skin, theorise its various forms, and cap-
ture its glimpses in fction, photography, and illustration.
Nyx, a Noctournal is a peer-reviewed print/online journal of art, politics and critical theory. It is edited and produced by
researchers clustered around the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, London. Further work will be published online at
nyxnoctournal.org, as well as the call for contributions to our next issue.
We hope you enjoy this body of work, and give special thanks to all our contributors and everyone who has helped put
this issue together.
JD Taylor, Spring 2013.
Editorial
6
I am continually surprised by the acts of estrange-
ment in which my body engages. All bodies do this to some
extent lungs breathe, hearts beat and so on, but with
psoriasis, which my article is concerned with, these
processes are highly visible. As a condition of the skin, it
is a pathology which is enacted both within and without,
visible to the social world as well as emerging from some little
understood infammatory source within the body. Tis arti-
cle will undertake a phenomenological exploration of my own
skin and how my experience of my body is afected by its lack of
compliance with medicine and cosmetics. By some unknown
causation it fakes, breaks, itches constantly, drawing attention
to bodily limits and the limits of medical knowledge. I want to
think through the meanings we ascribe to such infammatory
conditions in Western society, how my skin materialises at the
nexus of industrialisation, medicine, class and capital.
Tis investigation will emerge at the limit point, the thin
skin between the subjective and objective, observing and the-
orising my skin in ways which dissolve disciplinary bounda-
ries, to comprehend the cultural, biological and environmen-
tal forces that work upon my body, estranging it from me.
* * *
Te skin is the largest sensory organ: a comparatively vast
boundary between body and world which puts the body in
touch with the world as well as putting the body in touch with
itself. It feels and communicates a multitude of sensations:
pain, pleasure, itch, burn, shiver and so on. Steven Connor,
drawing on Michel Serres, views skin not merely as a surface,
but as a milieu: a meeting point where world and body touch,
defning their common border.
1
Te skin is both physiologi-
cal a sensory apparatus and imaginary: a containing bor-
der which demarcates inner and outer, I and you. In this
way, we have both an inner and an outer skin an outer skin
of the body and an inner one of the mind, an imaginary con-
tainer for selfood or skin ego, as Didier Anzieu describes.
2

Skin is also open to modulation, to porousness, and to pa-
thologies, and these pathologies are ofen read as related to
some disturbance of the mind, the inner skin afecting its
outer carapace.
While the endogenous porousness of skin complicates
the physiological boundary between inner and outer, pa-
thologies of the skin emphasise this. Te psoriatics skin is
an animated boundary, constantly bringing to conscious-
ness the alien-ness within ones own body. At any given
moment a minor scratch or pimple can overwhelm the skin
Acts of Estrangement:
Reading the Psoriatic-Skin
by TRISH MCTIGHE
with images by TOM MOORE
Mira, Dreaming
of You Dreaming
8
Lost in Music
9
around it and become an itchy, scaly plaque, the amelio-
ration of which takes far in excess of the time it took to
form. I have patches on my knee, small red spots which
are difcult to manage, if not intractable. At the base of
my spine: an intractable plaque. My elbows have similarly
intractable, thick, scaly patches. Either side of the bridge
of my nose are patches which are barely controlled with
immunosuppressant gel. Because this is an autoimmune
condition, it manifests on the surface of the skin, but also
emerges from some alien set of chemical reactions and
nerve responses within my body. All such chronic skin
conditions reveal the limits of the body: they constantly
draw ones attention to the surfaces of body, a skin that one
cannot be fully at home in. As Iris Marion Young notes,
bodily awareness ofen counts as estrangement and dis-
ruption.
3
Psoriasis demands attention, produces discom-
fort. It marks skin out as existing (or coming to be) at a
nexus of many worlds and discourses:
4
medicine, aesthet-
ics, economics, and points to the limits of these discourses
in the face of complex biological processes.
Even the medical professionals who are qualifed to
translate the body cannot fully fathom psoriasis. Revealing
the limits of medical knowledge, it remains only partially
translated, and for the person who owns/experiences/lives
within that skin, largely foreign. Psoriasis, from a medical
perspective, is a curious mixture of the unknown and the
known. Te pathogenesis of the condition is an unknown,
but more is known about its pathophysiology than any oth-
er skin condition.
5
It afects around 2% of the population in
the USA and UK and involves a hyperproliferation of the
epidermis.
6
Te cell cycle the time it takes for new cells to
be grown to replace dead skins cells is severely shortened.
Te normal time period for this cycle is 27 days. In pso-
riasis it is reduced to four.
7
Trauma to the skin may induce
psoriatic reactions, even the routine trauma of clothing on
knees, elbows, fngernails, genitals.
8
If we need a narrative to
read this activity then it may look as follows: the nerves in
the skin provide information to the brain that the epidermis
is under threat and that threat is far greater than it actu-
ally is. Te immune system responds by producing healing
defences: more skin cells. Tat which is meant to protect us
from the world becomes the disease in itself, as is so ofen
the case with such auto-immune conditions. Te root cause
of this immune paranoiac over-reaction remains an enigma,
and this puzzling skin condition provokes a multitude of
narratives: its proliferation of unknowns somehow demand
that sense be made of it.
While the root cause of the condition is unknowable, one
cannot help attempting to discern a pattern, even from sur-
face efects alone. Te foreignness of psoriasis-skin is less-
ened somewhat by two elements of the condition: pattern
and symmetry. It is a feature of the condition that outbreaks
in the form of plaques or rashes tend to be almost symmet-
rical across the body. Whatever happens on the lef happens
also on the right. I have an almost identical set of patches on
both hips. Almost identical spotting on both knees. Match-
ing butterfy patterns on either side of my nose. Tere are
of course exceptions to this, but on the whole it follows this
pattern. As well as this, the fact that this is a chronic condi-
tion clearing plaques can take weeks, months even, and
most of my plaques are being maintained and managed
rather than removed entirely means that the blemishes
becomes a familiar feature of the terrain of my skin. I could
map them, and in one sense they map me, they are defning
Te psoriatics skin is an animated boundary, constantly bringing to consciousness the alien-
ness within ones own body. At any given moment a minor scratch or pimple can overwhelm
the skin around it
10
topographical features of my skin, with the result that the
strangeness of my own skin is its most familiar aspect. Yet
even with elements of patterning, symmetry, it still remains
a disruptive force. It is a paradoxical conjunction of order
and chaos. A surface order coupled with a seemingly un-
knowable and therefore chaotic interior.
When medical science proves unable to translate pa-
thologies into some comprehensible narrative of cause and
efect, we ofen turn to the mind, and hold mental states re-
sponsible. Te author Dennis Potter, who sufered from a
severe form of the disease, commented on its frst manifes-
tation in his body:
In what I now see as a mysterious act of grace, I had
what must be a version of the middle course chosen for
me, and very soon afer coming down from New Col-
lege, I fnished up in hospital scarcely able to move. An
entropy of the spirit, I suppose, manifest in the swollen
rigidities of each limb and the fercely scalding mock-
ery of their outer casing. And so it was that more than
thirty years ago, apparently stripped of much more than
my skin, I had the opportunity of reassembling myself
from what I hesitate to call scratch. I had the chance of
making myself up all over again.
9
It is signifcant that Potter saw in a condition, in which
his bleeding and cracked skin was no longer his own, an op-
portunity to remake himself. Te body that becomes some-
thing other opens the door for the person to become some-
thing other. In the case of Potter, psoriasis also signifes the
porousness of the line between autobiographical truth and
fctional narrative. Like the author, Philip Marlow, the cen-
tral protagonist of Potters Te Singing Detective (broadcast
in 1986), sufers from the condition. However, the screen-
play works to undermine easy identifcations between au-
thors and their characters: Marlow is a writer of detective
novels and falls into a fantasy, in his fevered state, of a novel
about a detective of the same name, set in the 1930s (the
character is actually derived from the crime thrillers of Ray-
mond Chandler, of the same time). Temporal boundaries
and the limits between fction and reality, and between the
fctional narratives created by Chandler and Potter, become
as insecure and unfxed as Marlows (and Potters) own
cracked and bleeding carapace. Psoriasis plays a role in this
destabilising process. It precipitates the exposure of the for-
eign within the most familiar terrain: the text does not lead
us back all the way to its author, and neither, curiously, does
the skin to its owner.
We might think, then, of the skin as text, an object at
a distance from its perceiver and its author, and which be-
comes legible and interpretable through various discourses:
physiology, psychology, and so forth. In its kinesis, it may
also be possible to think skin, specifcally psoriatic skin,
through discourses of performance and theatre. At frst
glance, this is highly problematic, as the defnition of per-
formance, while contested, consists of doubling, of con-
sciousness of ones actions, even if this is playing a role in
a social situation, rather than in a site conventionally as-
sociated with a theatrical performance.
10
We cannot easily
call any bodily function a performance, by this defnition.
Psoriasis is neither a display of skill, nor a conscious dou-
bling of identity, replete with the intention to reveal itself
for a spectator of some sort. No more than breathing, it is
a mute force, yet more than breathing it is coiled within a
nexus of external infuences, trigger systems which have
in the past set the pattern of immune-system response in
motion and into which they are now locked. Neuroscientist
David Eagleman names the physiological and neurological
subroutines to which we have no access and of which we
have no acquaintance as zombie systems.
11
Yet psoriasis
is clearly a pathological rather than normal process in the
skin. Can we say that, like Eaglemans zombie systems, my
11
skin performs, at least in a functional way? It certainly de-
viates from its regular functioning, making its functioning
(or dis-functionality) visible. Tese arcane, excessive and
paranoid workings of my immune system play out upon
the surface of my body yet, as in Judith Butlers defnition
of the performative, there is no doer behind the deed.
12
I
have no control over it; it acts, as if of its own accord. I, and
those around me, are spectators for the show that is my
body. Functioning in this way, my skin seems to disobey the
boundary between performance and reality. And while one
might not be able to say that this exposure of mute force
in my body is a performance or art exactly, one can fnd
many examples of performance art exploring exactly this
idea. For instance, part of performance artist Marina Abra-
movics 1974 Rhythm 2 involves her becoming unconscious.
Te performance remains a performance, even though it is
pushed to the very limits of the defnition of the word. Per-
haps my kinetic, infammatory skin also demands a rethink
of the term.
However, unlike the performance artist who is the
prime mover of her own spectacle, psoriasis means that my
body is never totally my aesthetic surface, even though I
may read it as an aesthetic surface. It is unlike also the types
of performance art which utilise the body as aesthetic ma-
terial, with skin as canvas and fuids as paint. An aesthetic
reclamation of the body through practices such as body
modifcation is not possible for me. I can never tattoo my
skin, as breaks in the skin can trigger fare-ups. Attempts at
piercing my skin have failed in almost all cases, as my im-
mune system overreacts to these foreign objects. Any delib-
erate conversion of my skin which, as Patricia MacCormack
puts it, creates a new surface of the body as text,
13
is not
possible for me. Instead I watch my skin being written for
me. I am no more than a reader, distant from the author of
this spectacle: a spectator from across the chasm of the pro-
scenium arch of epidermal hyperplasia, parakeratosis and
spongiform pustules.
14
Tis sense of alienation is augmented by recent micro-
biological research which has suggested that part of what
causes these auto-immune conditions is disruption to our
microbiome, the unique set of bacteria that live upon and
within our bodies. Te research of Martin Blaser, a profes-
sor of microbiology at NYU, focuses on the idea that bacte-
ria provide a unique culture, a unique balance one which
is disrupted by certain medical interventions. For example,
Blaser believes that the stomach bacteria H-pylori, a bac-
teria long associated with cancer and ulcers and therefore
removed with antibiotics, may also have a positive role to
play in the body.
15
In other words, the removal of certain
bacteria may harm the body in other ways. Ones internal,
intestinal microbiome may be disrupted also much of the
blame may lie with the liberal use of antibiotics, or with
sugar-rich diets of highly processed food. Germs make us
ill, Blaser has said, yet without them we would not survive,
16

and the (sometimes necessary) impulse to rid ourselves of
them unbalances the whole system. Scientists are currently
experimenting with the somewhat extreme practice of re-
storing healthy gut bacteria through stool transplants. Yet
more are studying the efects of parasites which act upon
the immune system as regulatory agents. Te so-called
old friends hypothesis centres on the idea that the human
immune system cannot regulate itself adequately without
And so it was that more than thirty years ago, apparently stripped of much more than my
skin, I had the opportunity of reassembling myself from what I hesitate to call scratch. I had the
chance of making myself up all over again.
12
Jack Te Hat
McVitie
13
exposure to certain pathogens and there has been in the
last decade some success (though human trials have been
limited in number) in treating patients with infammatory
bowel disease with a specifc type of gut parasite known as
helminth.
17
Connections between psoriasis and bacterial or fungal
infections have been noted in medical literature. Tis may
lead one to suspect that a root cause of psoriasis, as with
other autoimmune conditions, may lie in disruptions to the
microbiome. To think of the condition in this way, as driven
or exacerbated by a bacterial or fungal agents on the skin,
reveals both the presence of this community of life on my
skin and in my gut, as well as revealing its disruption. On
the one hand, it is striking how healthy skin is a foreign ter-
ritory; it teems with invisible bacteria. On the other, the idea
that healthy skin has a natural set of bacteria a bacterial
skin that keeps us healthy would suggest that I have some-
how fallen out of step with nature. Tis view of psoriasis
would seem to suggest that, living in the sanitised developed
world, I have lost something important. Tis is a deeply ap-
pealing narrative to anyone seeking to make sense of an ap-
parently random skin condition. Indeed future research may
prove these ideas true and lead to new medical treatments.
However, what is at stake before these ideas are proven true
is that they have serious implications for the ways in which
psoriasis interacts with the marketplace. Someone (myself)
who sufers from a chronic but non-life-threatening condi-
tion will try anything to treat it. Te marketing tactics of
the probiotic industry and the organic movement/industry
would seem to ofer a potential restoration from the mod-
ern humans fall from bacterial grace. While probiotic food
manufacturers make great claims for their health benefts,
such claims are rarely backed up by randomised controlled
trials. Te tattered boundary of the psoriatic-skin and the
unknowns that it conceals leaves it open to the fantasy of
wholeness and unity that such a narrative promises. Te res-
toration of my invisible bacterial skin promises to give me
back the health of my visible, physiological skin.
In this regard, there may be little that is specifc and
unique about psoriasis. An acne suferer could surely dis-
cover the same interconnections and narrative of skin, aes-
thetics and the market-place within the terrain of her skin.
Nor does one need necessarily skin pathologies as vehicles
in order to be able to perceive those connections. Some-
one with perfectly normal, healthy skin (if such a thing
truly exists) can list their beauty products, their fragrances,
scrubs, cleansers, pore-tighteners, and unearth the same
immersion of their skin in the marketplace of beauty and
the fantasy of purity and wholeness on which it trades. Pso-
riasis however calls this to attention in very specifc ways,
and demands that we see the strangeness and foreignness
that lies at the heart of the great stretched and porous entity
which connects us to the world. Psoriasis reveals the for-
eign in the territory of the familiar, and any mingling in the
milieu of the psoriasis-skin is more like a war, a cold war
against a non-existent enemy, staged in a space beyond the
logic of cause and efect and without a hint of conscious vo-
lition: each faking patch of excess on my surface reveals a
gap at the heart of me,
18
one which demands that I think its
contradictions, and the ways it fragments my sense of self
and my bodily wholeness.
On the one hand, it is striking how healthy skin is a foreign territory; it teems with invisible
bacteria. On the other, the idea that healthy skin has a natural set of bacteria a bacterial skin
that keeps us healthy would suggest that I have somehow fallen out of step with nature.
14
NOTES
1. Steven Connor, Te Book of Skin, NY: Cornell, 2003, pp. 28-9. See
also Serres, Te Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies, London:
Continuum, 2005 (1985), p. 97.
2. Didier Anzieu, Te Skin Ego, trans. Chris Turner, New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1989, p. 101.
3. Iris Marion Young, Pregnant Subjectivity and the Limits of
Existential Phenomenology in Descriptions (Selected Studies in
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), Don Ihde (ed.), New York:
State University of New York Press, pp. 25-35 (p. 26). See also Herbert
Plgge Man and His Body for a consideration of the body objectifed
in illness, in Te Philosophy of the Body: Rejections of Cartesian
Dualism, Stuart F. Spicker (ed.), Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970.
4. As Jean-Luc Nancy puts it, bodies come to be at the limit between
sense and matter, discourse and materiality. See Jean-Luc Nancy,
Corpus, trans. Richard A. Rand, New York: Fordham University Press,
2008, p. 17.
5. Charles Camisa, Pathogenesis of Psoriasis, in Handbook of Psoriasis,
ed. Charles Camisa, UK, USA: Blackwell, 2004, p. 45.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Camisa, Te Clinical Variants of Psoriasis, in Handbook of
Psoriasis, p. 8.
9. Dennis Potter, Seeing the Blossom: Two Interviews and a Lecture,
London: Faber & Faber, 1994, pp. 49-50.
10. Tis is the type of broad but deeply useful defnition which Marvin
Carlson puts forward in Performance: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed,
NY, London: Routledge, 1994, pp. 4-5.
11. David Eagleman, Incognito: Te Secret Life of the Brain, UK:
Canongate, 2011, pp. 131
12. Judith Butler uses the term performativity to describe the repetitions
of activities which constitute doing gender and through which the
subject becomes legible to society, recognisable as a gendered subject.
Performance, if defned as a deliberate and conscious act, can unmask or
subvert performativity. Drag performances hold the potential, for Butler,
to reveal the performativity of gender. See Gender Trouble: Feminism
and the Subversion of Identity, New York and London: Routledge, 1990.
13. Te Great Ephemeral Tattooed Skin, Anglia Ruskin University
open repository, http://angliaruskin.openrepository.com/arro/
bitstream/10540/111127/1/Tattoo%2520Essay%2520post%2520print.pdf
[accessed 22 December 2012].
14. See Camisa, Handbook of Psoriasis, p. 37.
15. NYU School of Medicine, http://www.med.nyu.edu/medicine/labs/
blaserlab/v1-mbr_blaser.html?CSRT=16118979243332340752 [accessed
22 December 2012].
16. Quoted in Michael Spectre, Germs are Us, Te New Yorker,
October 2012, p. 32.
17. Ferris Jabr, For the Good of the Gut: Can Parasitic Worms
Treat Autoimmune Diseases? Scientifc American 2010, http://www.
scientifcamerican.com/article.cfm?id=helminthic-therapy-mucus
[accessed 18 December, 2012]
18. Merleau-Ponty writes of the break in the heart of self-identity in the
following way: Te moment perception comes my body efaces itself
before it and never does the perception grasp the body in the act of
perceiving [ . . . ] the moment I touch my lef hand with my right hand,
I correspondingly cease touching my right hand with my lef hand.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Te Visible and the Invisible & Working Notes,
trans. Alphonso Lingus, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1969,
pp. 133-4.
Having completed her Ph.D. thesis at Queens University Belfast in 2009 on haptics in the later drama of Samuel Beckett for
stage and screen, Trish McTighe is currently a post-doctoral research assistant on the Staging Beckett Project at the University
of Reading, UK. She has published in several international journals on aesthetics, corporeality and technology in performance.
15
Tom Moore is a painter of fowers. More specifcally he is a painter of fowers who draws monsters; crumbling monsters
dreaming themselves into bloom, the fragility of poisons, monsters become fowers, freworks at their moment of death and
beauty thats always already lost. Writing about his work is a necessary betrayal. Te words steal things from the pictures.
Each picture is made of other pictures, pictures the artist loves, pictures that trouble the artist, he says they make him strong
and afraid. Te work is collage in the tradition of Hannah Hch or Linder Sterling but also that of pop music, its an aggregate
of beloved accumulation. Hand drawn then digitised memento mori. Tom Moore has been looking at Jan Van Huysum and
crystals.
(written by Hestia Peppe)
You can see more of Toms work at www.tommoore.eu
cccption"
16
Super 8
17
by HEDI EL KHOLTI
18
19
I am listening to Franoiz Breuts KM 83. Tere is a long-
ing in her voice. Te song is about sex and abandon, but in
ways that are oblique. Two lovers secretly meeting, perhaps,
and theres not much else in the world that could sustain
them: the second verse talks about the failure of urban plan-
ning. I think of all the nights I drove along the Arroyo Seco
to Larrys place. Darkened and sinuous streets, with this
vague feeling inside that I was getting away with something,
but what? Id park in front of a church and as I walked to-
wards his house, anxious and eager, I would see the ficker
of the TV through the Venetian blinds.
What was the nature of the transaction? I ofen felt like
a hustler taking outcalls. He always initiated our encoun-
ters and they were always unexpected, with long periods
of absence between them, but at times they were clustered
and when that was the case there was a perversive sense of
remorse in abdicating our sovereignty over something over-
whelmingly addictive, a desire that resisted interpretation.
Te night I met Larry at a local Karaoke bar he sang a
catastrophic but joyful and shameless (drunken?) rendition
of La Bamba. Just the way it should be. Later that night he
bought me a drink and I lef my group of friends to sit with
him in the outside patio.
He invited me over to his house to see his art collection
but I politely and regretfully declined. A week later we ran
into each other at the same bar and I lef with him. We went
on a couple dates. Maybe there was a sense of possibility,
back then, that this could turn into a relationship. But his
refusal to engage in any psychology lef me incapable of ex-
pressing myself. He also insisted on practising his confused
French with me, mixed with Italian expressions, which add-
ed to the disconnect.
Larry was lonely, perhaps as much as I was in my exile in
LA. In my early days here, I felt protected by having sex in a
foreign language; the violence of language contained by the
dislocation between the signifer and the signifed and sof-
tened by the fact that the words carried no pre-existing as-
sociation. I felt vaguely exotic and I enjoyed beingstripped
of history, my identity predicated by other peoples gaze and
desire, an empty object waiting to be named. We kept seeing
each other for a few years, the pleasure of repeating the in-
tensity of the frst night looped countless times, sustaining
the role we had assigned to each other. Still, during the span
of our distant relationship, we simultaneously transitioned:
me into middle age and him into old age. Unequivocally los-
ing ground.
Larry made me think of Scotty, the character from
Hitchcocks Vertigo embodied by James Stewart. Hitchcock
attributed the failure of the flm to the fact that Stewart was
too old for the part and subsequently used Gary Grant (who
was actually four years older) in his next couple of flms. I
think the tension of being at once old and young is what
makes the movie so afective.
Like something is taking over, a possession, a becoming.
Tere is something so feverish about Stewarts interpreta-
tion of Scotty, the infantilized man, a prisoner of his stylish
yet claustrophobic bachelor pad, slowly realizing that his life
is passing him by, wanting a second chance. Te dream se-
quence, designed by Saul Bass, was inspired by Duchamps
hypnotic Rotoreliefs. But these days the nude doesnt de-
scend the staircase, she is Michelle Pfeifer in Scarface and
she takes the glass elevator.
What was the nature of the transaction? Is my relation-
ship with culture too fraught with desire and identifcation?
Or am I trying unburden my socio-economic anxieties in
the safety of his embrace? Larry grew old in his beginners
house and when that reality sank in, the implacable ramif-
cation of that reality, he felt the urge to sell it. He moved to
a place I never visited, a penthouse with high ceilings and a
lot of white wall space, where he could properly display his
art collection a hazy decision, made half-drunk, conned
during an open house.
20
21
22
23
Te last time I saw Larry we made plans to see Lit-
tle Foxes, starring Kelly McGillis, in Pasadena. Our frst date
in at least 3 years. I went to his house and we took his new
car, a Lexus with a camera that allows you to see where you
back up, to a Mexican restaurant near the theatre. Tere he
shared his most shameful secret, about a friend from his
days at Yale who died of AIDS. He visited him at the hospi-
tal, but didnt come out to him. He let him die alone, with-
out knowing that they shared the same afiction. Both clos-
eted but one forced out the closet by the disease. Afer the
play we had sex and I felt close to him, and I could feel the
invisible distance that our respective pain created between
us receding. I told him that I loved him and that we should
have been together. Tere was a moment of absence, a look
of incomprehension on his face, and then he said, You are
a smoker. It couldnt have worked.
* * *
I am reading Les Derniers Jours de Roland Barthes by
Herv Algalarrondo. I found it in Sylvres library in Baja.
Its an ugly and sentimental book in the worst possible way.
Te author thinks he is tolerant and non-judgemental about
Barthes homosexuality and his love for hustlers and then
proceeds to describe it as sordid and unsatisfying, exhibit-
ing no curiosity about what could have attracted Barthes to
that world, beyond the obvious reasons.
Barthes could have been attracted to its rituals, the
personalities of the hustlers, their trajectories narrative
possibilities so well described by Jean Luc Hennig (in Les
Garons de Passe, dedicated to Pasolini and his murderer)
or in the pages of W.S. Burroughs. But the cruising spots of
Paris are not Japan. Algalarrondos Barthes is chaste (loves
to cuddle) and infantilized by horrible French expressions
(mamie, biquet) that substitute familiarity and closeness for
a topic that eludes the author. In the conclusion, Algalar-
rondo inserts himself into the narrative, confating Barthes
obsession with a photo of his mother with an anecdote
about his own preteen daughters fascination with a portrait
of the authors mother as a girl. Circularly, we return safely
to the values and relationships that really matter. A morally
well lived life.
Te hustlers, meanwhile, are dismissed: a pure mone-
tary transaction, an exchange value between those who have
the power of speech (and inherently money) and those who
have the power of beauty. Andr Techin is quoted heav-
ily. Barthes hung out with a group of gay guys that Techin
was part of. I remember watching Techins I Dont Kiss
when I moved to Paris. Apparently, the older man played by
Philippe Noiret was inspired by Barthes. Watching it again,
I discover that the flm was written by Jacques Nolot, whose
flms Before I Forget and Porn Teater I enjoyed greatly. I
Dont Kiss follows the journey of a young man from a de-
pressing mountain village to Paris where he hopes to make
In my early days here, I felt protected by having sex in a foreign language; the violence of lan-
guage contained by the dislocation between the signifer and the signifed and softened by the
fact that the words carried no pre-existing association.
24
a place for himself. He vaguely aspires to become an actor
but ends up as a hustler instead.
Techin rewrote Nolots screenplay, which he found too
gay, too specialized. Te story, inspired by Nolots life, was
supposed to be about the hustlers discovery of his own ho-
mosexuality, a rite of passage. Instead we have an incompre-
hensible third act featuring Emmanuelle Beart as a tragic
whore, sporting a ridiculous red coat and a Louise Brooks
haircut, with whom the young man falls madly in love. Te
last scene with Noiret, who witnesses the protagonists tra-
jectory into hustling, is the most evocative. Noiret/Barthes
is sitting at his desk in a room art-directed as a writers
study: piles of books, a life-size porcelain cat gazing towards
the window, two fountain pens in a pencil case.
Te youth enters. Noiret ofers him a drink and says, Its
crazy how much youve changed. Te youth answers joking-
ly, How so, for good or bad? Noiret replies, Youre more
beautiful, but you dont have the same gaze. What transfor-
mation is implied in this exchange? What desirable thing
has been lost? Noiret explains what the youth has gained by
becoming a hustler, the sum of money and freedom. Noiret
then takes out a book by Nietzsche and proceeds to read:
Tere is no noble pleasure that cant be reduced to prostitu-
tion. (Te quote in fact is from Baudelaires My Heart Laid
Bare, not Nietzsche.)
Te youth is alienated by Noirets discourse. He is belit-
tled by Noirets power of speech. Tis is not what he came
for. Te scene mirrors another midway through the flm
where the youth is forced by a drama coach to memorise
and perform Hamlets famous monologue in front of the
whole class. He clearly doesnt understand what he has re-
cited. When asked what he thinks of the monologue, he
says, I dont understand it, my stomach hurts, and leaves
the class never to return. What he is confronted with isnt
Hamlets monologue but the gaze of the other students, the
wall their cultural knowledge erects. Its a scene about class
cruelty, cultural currency, and inherited advantages that the
other students, presumably from upper-class backgrounds,
take for granted. Te facility with which they interpret the
meaning of the play (simulation, melancholy, Kierkegaard,
Dostoyesky) isolates him.
Te scene reminds me of Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-
Claude Passerons conclusion to Les Hritiers, their 1964
book about education, social mobility and cultural patrimo-
ny subtle capital made of knowledge, savoir faire, savoir
dire inherited by children from the upper class. Bourdieu
calls this the charismatic ideology an operation that trans-
forms the result of class privilege into individual grace or
personal accomplishment. Tis transmutation, he says,
masks class racism. Te product of a bad education (which
could be adjusted or corrected) is internalized by those who
fail as individual destiny.
* * *
Te neighbours voices, an agitation. Te heavy door
metal door theyve installed is the measure of my day a
perfectly decent day that I am perversely letting vanish
into oblivion. I am cold the night is falling. I am going to
have my frst drink. Im waiting for something to happen,
a phone call from Larry? Its Saturday night. I am waiting
for 10:15 PM and then Ill listen to Te Cure. And the tap
Its a scene about class cruelty, cultural currency, and inherited advantages that the other
students, presumably from upper-class backgrounds, take for granted.
25
drip, drip, drip When I would play it on my Walkman as
an unhappy teenager, I used to believe that Robert Smith
whispered the word suicide at the end of the song. It was
barely audible and maybe I imagined it.
I am tempted to go to the bar where we frst met. Tere
were times in our strange relationship when I felt that if I
thought about him intensely I could manifest his presence.
Outside there is a Lexus parked. I think for a second that
Larry is here, but I read the license plate. It says Evil Dead.
Not his style. Te bar is empty and depressing. I regret com-
ing here instantly. I get a glass of wine and decide to go to
the patio. Tere is a man who fts the profle except he seems
a little nervous. Hes looking at me. His gaze is insistent and
uncomfortable. He smokes and sits with a couple of friends
who are playing some sort of trivia game that you fnd in
gay bars. I am waiting for him to talk to me, but that never
happens.
I go inside. I go to the restroom. Near the mirror there
is a missing persons fyer bearing a photo of someone who
goes ofen to this bar not particularly reassuring. On the
TV over the bar, a biography of LA publishing magnate Otis
Chandler is playing. His son, who he thought incapable of
taking over his duties at the LA Times, has died of a brain
tumour. Otis two passions killing exotic animals (a shot
of him lovingly petting a dead bear) and collecting vintage
cars are now both on display in the same giant warehouse,
where they create a strange juxtaposition. Something infan-
tile, something you can only see in California, like Hearst
Castle, or Scientology A fragile notion of manhood in-
herited from reading adventure pulp.
Hedi el Kholti is a writer, editor and artist based in Los Angeles. He is the co-editor of Semiotext(e), an independent pub-
lisher of works of theory, fction, madness, economics, satire, sexuality, science fction, activism and confession. He currently edits
Semiotext(e)s occasional intellectual journal Animal Shcltcr.
26
Interview with STEWART HOME
by NICHOLAS GLEDHILL
with images by PAUL STAXX SPRAGET
Northumbrian
Psycho
Writer, activist and counter-culture icon Stewart Home talks to
Nyx about literature, obscenity and the politics of higher educa-
tion in reference his latest novel: Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane
(Penny-Ante Editions, 2013). At times hilarious and consistently
disturbing, the novel is narrated by Charlie Templeton, a socio-
pathic, drug-addicted Cultural Studies lecturer at the fctional
City University of Newcastle upon Tyne (CUNT). Trough an
increasingly disturbed and cut up narrative, Charlie relates his
professional frustrations, personal vendettas and predatory
sexual relationships while hatching Machiavellian plans to gain
total power over the students and faculty of CUNT. Typically
of Home, the text is peppered with tangential references to his
diverse cultural infuences, ranging from avant-garde art, al-
ternative music, underground cinema and political ideology to
pornography and the occult.
27
28
29
NICHOLAS GLEDHILL: Compared to previous novels,
like 69 Tings to Do with a Dead Princess or Down and Out
in Shoreditch and Hoxton, this one although its still very
avant-garde seems to be a bit more linear, to have more
of a conventional style in some ways. Is it a bit of a new
departure for you, stylistically?
STEWART HOME: Yes, its more like a postmodern pica-
resque, which I did in Cunt as well, although theres less
travel than in Cunt. Basically I did it when I had a writer
in residence at York University, that was in 2005 and in
the summer term as far as I recall, and youve got the of-
fce and you sit down and think whats all this crap on the
walls? And thats where I started. Tats what Nick Royle
did in his new book as well [First Novel, 2013], he sat
down and started with a description of his academic ofce
when penning a book about a creative writing teacher. . .
He told me he also started his last novel in 2004 but it took
him longer to write than mine. My new book was fnished
in maybe 6 months but it took about seven years to fnd
a publisher, whereas Nick took six years or something to
write his. So we started at pretty much the same time and
our novels ended up being published at pretty much the
same time too!
NG: So was the campus in the novel based on the one at
York? Its quite important to the plot obviously, particular-
ly the central lake, and the towering, brutalist architecture.
SH: Tere is the lake [at York] but the CUNT campus is
also partly based on Essex which has the architecture. York
is a 60s modernist campus but its a bit more low rise, so it
doesnt have the nice tower blocks like Essex. Also I set it in
Newcastle so its a mix of things really. Te name I use for
the academic institution, the City University of Newcastle
upon Tyne, or CUNT, actually comes from a really notori-
ous thing that happened in Newcastle when all the poly-
technics were re-branding themselves.
NG: So CUNT is a real place?
SH: No, its not a real place, the polytechnic in Newcastle, I
think Northumbria polytechnic although Im not sure what
it was called, it became really notorious among designers
because they spent all this money re-branding it as City
University of Newcastle upon Tyne before they realised
what the acronym was. And I know Newcastle quite well
for various reasons so I thought Id set it there, but its not
literally any one place.
NG: I have to ask you about the seminal Bret Easton Ellis
novel American Psycho. You reference it directly in Mandy
Charlie & Mary-Jane, and also I thought that in the char-
acter of Charlie and in the plot generally there are a lot of
parallels. Is this important?
SH: Well, I kind of got fed up with being compared to Bret
Easton Ellis. Before Dead Princess my frst fve novels were
these third person skinhead novels which were using a lot
of Alain Robbe-Grillet and ideas about repetition, and us-
ingbecause it was the 80s when I was writing this stuf
all that postmodern theory, Baudrillards notion of simula-
tion and so on. So, rather than, like the surrealists or the
nouveau-roman of Robbe-Grillet, just inscribing pulp prose
into a non-linear narrative, I thought well, Ill simulate a lin-
ear pulp narrative, because Im using elements of crime and
other pulp stuf. And the critics all thought I was just writ-
ing pulp, so I fgured well Ive done these fve novels that are
linear so Ill try writing something non-linear, and as soon
as Id the frst non-linear book was published it was oh, hes
infuenced by Robbe-Grillet, but the earlier ones were also
infuenced by Robbe-Grillet, it just wasnt as obvious. But
30
then I immediately started being compared to Bret Easton
Ellis all the time. And, while I think that Easton Ellis is actu-
ally one of the better big selling authors and I dont dislike
his books, what he does, part of his conceptualisation, is to
write on this very even keel where the books never go any-
where at the end, and obviously in this book [Mandy Char-
lie & Mary-Jane] Im kind of rifng on those Jim Tomp-
son third person narratives as well; Charlie ends up in Hell
whereas Tompsons characters would end up on the run in
Mexico, but there are parallels there. So I wouldnt say its all
that much like Ellis, because I use a collage approach, and
while this one doesnt feature so much appropriated mate-
rial as say Down and Out in Shoreditch and Hoxton, where
every paragraph is 100 words so everything is also kind of
re-written, its mainly appropriated material thats been re-
worked, and I think when youve got that collage approach
youve got a very uneven texture to the book, which I prefer,
while the idea of literary style is usually to have this even-
ness of tone which I dont really go for myself but Ellis does.
So, while I can understand the comparisons on one level
I got pissed of on another and I wanted to do something
that started looking like Ellis but then did something else, so
what I did at the end was make it like a rocket taking of in
the last two chapters and then youre somewhere else com-
pletely, and that was very deliberately to be very unlike Ellis.
And the other thing that is very unlike him is that where he
references things like Huey Lewis and Phil Collins Im refer-
encing Italian cannibal horror movies and other things that
are more obscure. Teres this thing where if you want to be
in the bestseller list you have to reference Te Beatles or the
Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd, you dont reference anything
that isnt, like, absolutely unmistakable for everyone, so I de-
liberately made more obscure references.
NG: Actually Charlie made me think very much of the Pat-
rick Bateman character in American Psycho in the sense
of his total self-involvement and need to be in control of
people, and in the humour, the very dark humour, but the
character seemed re-worked into a more 21st Century, Brit-
ish setting. Would it be right to see the novel as parodying
contemporary British culture in the same way that Bret Eas-
ton Ellis did for American culture in the 1980s? Is Charlie a
psycho for the neoliberal era?
SH: Well, yes it is a critique of what comes out of neolib-
eralism, I mean youre not meant to admire the narrator,
hes meant to be funny and youre meant to laugh along at
the book, but hes not meant to be admirable. But at the
same time to keep the interest of the reader not everything
Charlie says is complete nonsense. So yes the book is par-
odying contemporary culture, although Id say European
more than British. I dont really think it makes sense to
compare British culture to American because of the difer-
ences in geographical scaleso while you might compare
London culture to that of New York, if youre taking the
whole of the United States then it makes more sense to
compare it to Europe. And a lot of what Charlie is inter-
ested in is European rather than strictly British or English.
Obviously the book also parodies the Belgian mockumen-
tary flm about a serial killer, Man Bites Dog. But the take
on the culture is from when the book was written which
is 2005.
NG: Speaking of neoliberalism, this issue of Nyx is actually
on the theme of skin, and although its a bit of a tenuous
connection I thought we could talk a bit about sex and por-
nography. Obviously theres a huge amount of very extreme,
graphic sexual content in a lot of your work and this novel
is no exception, in fact its so prominent I was wondering
whether theres a level on which you might deliberately be
using it to say something about contemporary attitudes to
sex, which are of course discussed a lot right now in social
31
and political theory, and that maybe within all the sexual
explicit stuf theres some critique on sexualisation and gen-
der politics under capitalism.
SH: Yes, I think I am critical of gender politics, and I think
theres a whole lot of debates that arent really resolved, I
think theres a problem with that kind of Dworkinite view,
actually she wasnt exactly the one who came up with it, but
you know that kind of . . .
NG: Second-wave feminism?
SH: Yes, the kind of porn the theory rape the practice idea,
but at the same time theres a huge level of obvious aliena-
tion going on in relation to sexuality, theres a huge amount
of sexism and homophobia, and how you address that is
complex, and you can partly address these things by sati-
rising them in fction. One of the things its difcult to get
across to people is that in fction you can express opinions
that you dont agree with, which I always fnd surprising,
when people describe my fction and say thats my opinion,
because while it may or may not be my opinion as a piece
of fction you have to work through it, you cant just fnd
something in a piece of fction and then critique me on the
basis of it, you have to actually work out what my standpoint
is in relation to it is. And even in things that might appear
to be non-fction you have to work through and fnd out
whats going on, because of my use of irony and other kinds
of ploys. Obviously its a kind of classic rhetorical trick to
state positions that you dont agree with just to manoeuvre
people somewhere else, you can use those positions in all
sorts of ways. But I do think theres a problem with moral-
ism in certain areas of what you were calling second-wave
feminism, but at the same time there are elements of cri-
tique which are quite reasonable but when you see some
feminists linking up with conservatives in the States to get
anti-pornography ordinances passed its problematic. I dont
have a huge problem with people watching porn as long as
everythings consensual. At the same time I think a lot of
porn is just boring . . .

NG: Yes, I mean theres a lot of boring stuf, and then theres
stuf thats quite harmless and playful, possibly even liberat-
ing or subversive in some ways, which risks getting bundled
in with the more unpleasant stuf. Ive been enjoying Chus
Martinez
1
by the way . . .
SH: One of the things I fnd really funny is where you can
actually fnd porn on the internet, I found this whole cache
of porn in Wikipedia, where a whole lot of information on
sexual fetishes is really obsessively and repetitively written
about, and then links you to all kinds of sex sites. Like the
entry on erotic humiliation kind of gleefully goes through
all the ways you can erotically humiliate someone, includ-
ing online.
NG: So its strange because the context is cold and clinical?
SH: Well, its not really clinical, its kind of pseudo-clinical
and objective but you can tell that whoevers really writing it
Te name I use for the academic institution, the City University of Newcastle upon Tyne,
or CUNT, actually comes from a really notorious thing that happened in Newcastle when
all the polytechnics were re-branding themselves.
32
I dont have a huge problem with people
watching porn as long as everythings con-
sensual. At the same time I think a lot of
porn is just boring . . .
is getting of on a kind of exhibitionism of writing about hu-
miliation online. Also, it just amazes me that people search
for porn on Youtube, which I can tell from the results I get
when I look at the stats pages on my own Youtube chan-
nels, and what you can and cant show on Youtube, because
Ive had videos removed that consisted entirely of text and
sound, or numerals text and sound, but at the same time if
you happen to be into panty-wetting you can watch panty-
wetting to your hearts content on Youtube because the girls
arent naked. But actually Id think that for a 13-year-old
theyd probably be more disturbed coming across a panty-
wetting video than something showing straight sex.
NG: Youve had some other problems with censorship in
the past, isnt some of your work banned in Russia for being
unchristian?
SH: Tere was a court case in Russia over Come Before
Christ and Murder Love[Serpents Tail, 1997], it just ground
to a halt in some legal process in the end but there were peo-
ple trying to take the publishers to court. Tat was the worst
problem in Russia but it wasnt just the government. Te frst
novel I had published there, Blow Job [Serpents Tail, 1997],
had a parody of National Bolshevism in it, set in England.
National Bolshevism was a tendency [in 1930s Germany] to
the right of the Nazis, they criticised the Nazis for being too
plebeian. Te most famous fgure I think involved with it
was Ernst Jnger, who wrote Storm of Steel and was Hitlers
favourite author. So, its a real political tendency . . .
33
34
35
NG: I think you also mention Jnger in Mandy Charlie and
Mary-Jane.

SH: I think I possibly do, yes. And Russia now has a fairly
large National Bolshevist movement, because you can see
how with Russian history if you want a fascist movement
then National Bolshevism in a kind of re-confgured way
makes sense. So anyway the Russian National Bolsheviks
were really pissed of with the way I depicted them in this
novel, although it got no reaction anywhere else like in Eng-
land or America because no-one knew what I was actually
parodying. So they had a campaign against the novel which
then got taken up by Christian fascists who also had a prob-
lem with me, and then there was a novel that had some oc-
cult content, so occult then automatically becomes Satanist
even though it doesnt have to be Satanist. You can have
non-Satanist occultism as well.
NG: Id say Catholicism is basically non-Satanist occultism.
SH: Yes, and Satanism is just Christianity in reverse anyway,
thats my biggest problem with it. And so the fascists fre-
bombed my publishers ofces and stuf like that, so it wasnt
just a legal process, there were quite a lot of problems with
fascist attacks.
NG: Okay, bringing it a bit closer to home now I need to
change the subject again. Tere are a couple of things Id like
to ask you about higher education, there seems to be a sense
of cynicism or disillusionment in the new novel about the
way the University is going as an institution. For instance
theres this distinction made between the academic and the
administrative, management side, Charlie obviously being
desperate to join the administrative side basically because
hes a megalomaniac and a bit of a dick . . .
36
SH: And because he cant make it on the other side, hed
probably rather be a star academic but hes never done any
good research work.
NG: Yes, right, and I was wondering if your experiences
as a writer in residence in various institutions over the last
couple of decades have informed your depiction of the Uni-
versity and its inner workings, if you think things are radi-
cally changing for the worse at the moment as a lot of people
seem to think, that the landscape of higher education has
started to change since the restructuring and the introduc-
tion of tuition fees and so on. For instance, for me one of
the funniest episodes in the book is when Charlie is conniv-
ing with another academic to have Cultural Studies move to
a more right-wing political stance, as he foresees that only
rich kids will be able to choose it as an option in future and
that their parents, who will be paying, will want them to
learn more conservative theory.
SH: Yeah, well I think its true, although I dont think uni-
versities were a paradise before tuition fees, I mean my own
experience was being thrown out for winning arguments
with tutors, I dont have a degree because I was kicked out.
But when I went to Kingston Polytechnic at the beginning of
the eighties I remember I was kind of surprised by the back-
grounds of the other students, you know I hadnt wanted to
go to university because I thought it would just be a lot of
posh kids, but I was on a full maintenance grant, but no one
else on my course was and they were more posh than I ex-
pected and some had been privately educated. I got my grant
and I could get housing beneft during the holidays and all
that and sign on and everything else, so for me I partly went
because the money was good, so I cant see why someone
like me would go now, and obviously when you start to make
kids pay for it like with everything else it gets worse because
then they think theyre a customer and should dictate the
service they get. And on the whole I fnd the way creative
writing is taught in universities ridiculous . . . actually the last
long-term Creative Writing residency I did was really fantas-
tic, which was at Strathclyde and run by Jonathon Hope at
that time, whos a linguist, so he didnt mess about when stu-
dents came in for the frst year of their degree setting them
work on the meaning of Shakespeare, but actually taught
them about linguistics, which I think was teaching them in a
really good way. And I was able to run the Creative Writing
in the way I like, the same as York actually, where I would
make the students blog and get them to comment on one
anothers work, like a kind of cyberspace art studio system.
When youre doing something creative youre going to learn
more from the other students than you can from whoevers
teaching, because you can spend more time with the other
students. Tats why the art schools do well at undergradu-
ate level Fine Art, I think postgraduate Fine Art is a waste
of time. And I feel very strongly that with Creative Writing,
unless you have a very understanding English department,
the top-down hierarchical teaching method just doesnt
work and those departments arent the right environment in
which to teach kids to write fction. And the education sys-
For me one of the funniest episodes in the book is when Charlie is conniving with another aca-
demic to have Cultural Studies move to a more right-wing political stance, as he foresees that
only rich kids will be able to choose it as an option in future and that their parents, who will be
paying, will want them to learn more conservative theory.
37
38
39
tem, higher education, its more and more about just pulling
in students money, how many foreign students can we get
and how much is the university making and its not about
learning. It should be about the learning environment. But
with English department Creative Writing its mostly about
conning kids into buying into a pipe dream, to get them to
part with their money because they believe they can then
make a living as writersbut the overwhelming majority
will never even be professionally published.
NG: Finally, if you were going to sum up the new novel,
Mandy Charlie & Mary-Jane, in just one sentence, how
would you describe it?
SH: Its the most dirty, perverted flth you could possibly
read and it will give you better orgasms than anything else
you can fnd. [laughs]
NOTES

1 An alter-ego used online by Home to blog on sexual fetishism.
Stewart Homes website: www.stewarthhomesociety.org. Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane is available now from Amazon or
direct from the publisher: www.penny-ante.net/pa011.html
Nicholas Gledhill is a graduate from the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, and an editor of Nyx, a noctournal.
Paul Spraget studied Interactive Fine Art at Manchester Metropolitan University before falling out of love with art, then
falling in love with beer. He is now a publican. Tese photos were taken of the late-night TV channel Babestation, which he
became mildly obsessed with documenting whilst dogsitting at his grandmothers house. // paulspraget@gmail.com
40
by TRACI KELLY
Eating
Skins:
Paper, Ink
& Flesh in
Six Courses
41
Abas Amini, Nottingham, UK, 2003. Photo credit: Nottingham Evening Post, used with permission.
42
Amuse-bouche
In Herman Melvilles 1851 fctional narrative Moby
Dick, the tattooed cannibal Queequeg maps out the cul-
tural imagination of the fear-inducing Other in relation to
the standardised order. More recently, in 2001, Armin Mei-
wes dismembered and ate the consenting Bernd Brandes,
fulflling each of their fantasies. Te case etched itself into
the history of German law, highlighting its punctures and
escape routes. Cannibalism in itself is not an ofence in
Germany, and as Brandes had consented to his own dis-
memberment and consumption in the eyes of German law
it could only be viewed as killing on request, aligned with
assisting euthanasia. Meiwes was consequently convicted
on alternative accounts of murdering for the purpose of
sexual pleasure and for disturbing the peace of the dead. In
his pre-trial interview Meiwes proclaimed that since eating
Brandes he had taken on some of the ingested mans quali-
ties, such as speaking the English language more fuently.
Some scholars suggest that the island of Great Britain
takes its name from the practice of tattooing, with Britons
translating as people of the designs and the ancient Picts
from what is now modern day Scotland taking their name
from the latin pictus, meaning painted, and who were de-
scribed as the the painted/tattooed people.
1
Te treatment
of skins through ingestion and inscription, with tattooing
itself being a process of ingestion, spans identity practices,
popular literary fction and contemporary culture.
Entre
I was born in a slum. Te condemned house rented
from a private landlord had a slumping roof and damp
walls which were cracked and decaying. My grandmother
would paper and repaper the walls in order to disguise our
living conditions. Te cracks were so deep in places that the
wallpaper had to be put up in smaller pieces, like a patch-
work quilt. In my bedroom she hung pale wallpaper with
sprawling fowers. Over time the dampness from the wall
would seep through. It would turn the seams of the wall-
paper brown frst, and then slowly spread inwards towards
the middle ground where crystal blooms would appear.
Tese spreading crystal formations caught the light at cer-
tain times and were much more beautiful than the printed
fowers they threatened. I would haul a chair over and climb
to look at them more closely and test their nature by drag-
ging my hardened fngernails across them. Being a result
of dampness and salt migration, the crystals would readily
bare the evidence of my scratching. Teir beauty and for-
mation crumbled and dissolved when placed on my fnger-
tips. Tey could not be held.
During my childhood I sufered from numerous skin
conditions, all with diferent causes, but all unbearably itchy
and sore. My most miserable time with my skin happened
when three conditions coincided. I sufered with weeping
eczema on my hands and inner arms and at the back of my
knees, with athletes foot on my toes and a bout of impetigo
mostly evident on my inner arms. At this time my skin felt
like an enemy and a blanket of discomfort. I did not want to
be touched by any other person, but I wanted to touch my-
self excessively and wear out my nerve ends in an attempt
to make them blissfully numb. I could not fnd relief from
my skins demand to be scratched, but I would soon learn
to scratch with knuckles rather than nails. Each day became
a ritual of attendance to the demanding skin surface. Each
weeping toe would be individually bandaged at the begin-
ning and end of each day. During the day, exacerbated by
the wearing of shoes, that due to the bandages were now
a tight ft, the athletes foot would continually weep, soak-
ing into the bandages and drying, bonding skin and textile
surfaces. Before bed each night I would sit soaking my feet
in a tepid bowl of water, waiting for the signs of the dissolv-
43
ing bond as the bandages started to unravel. Tis is when
the beauty of what I saw on the wallpapers surface in my
bedroom translated to something more terrifying when
played out upon my own skin. As the bandages became
loose, ofen so did the skin, curling at the edges of cracks
and peeling of, just like my wallpaper. When the feet were
gently patted with a dry towel the skinless toes would send
tiny beads of fuid to the surface that would catch the light
and glisten like the salt crystals on the wall. I pictured my
grandmother and her expenditure of energy as she revis-
ited the same spots of wallpaper, reapplying them each time
they fell away. In the end, paper and feshy skins were both
destined to be shed. I became aware that the shedding of
skin is not always the ongoing exfoliation of things already
dead, but sometimes the uncomfortable stripping of a layer
that is still alive.
Te weeping eczema on my hands, inside elbow creases
and on the back of the knees were treated with diferent
intensities of hydrocortisone ointments. Tis treatment
went on for years, eventually making my skin wafer thin
and paper-like. As the eczema, unlike the athletes foot, was
not bandaged, it was more than I could do to resist ripping
into skin with nails until sometimes it bled. Like the trailing
of my nails through the salt crystals on wallpaper, I would
leave a trail of markings on my own skin, visible for hours
until superseded by others. In addition to this, the skin on
my inside elbows, already aggravated by eczema, erupted
with impetigo. Beginning with tapioca-like tiny blisters,
which erupt with watery fuid, the impetigo began to form
crusts, which once again resembled the crystalisation on
the wallpaper surface. Tese patches of otherly texture
became scabs, at which I was also tempted to pick to test
their nature. Each night until the outbreak had cleared up I
was nested between two clean sheets, like unmarked paper.
Each day the bed was stripped and my skin started to renew
itself. My grandmother continued to patch up the room
with new bits of wallpaper and fresh sheets.
Main Course
In Te Parlour (2006/7) was a sequence of public re-
search events by the company Hancock and Kelly Live that
took place in D.C. Tattoo Saloon, Nottingham, UK. Te
events were instigated to explore how one body may em-
body the memory of an Other, and how bodies may hold or
fail to hold each other to account.
Te wallpaper in my collaborator Richard Hancocks
childhood home, from which the tattoo design for In Te
Parlour was taken, was hung in the hallway, that transition-
al space through which bodies pass on their way to other
destinations. Instead of the usual wood chip found in abun-
dance in such homes in the early eighties, Richards parents
had decided upon an extravagant, maroon, focked wallpa-
per. As the wallpaper was their pride and joy it was not to be
touched by either Richard or his older brother. Tey could
not risk leaving the telltale marks of touching dirty fn-
Te memory was painfully etched into the surface of my skin. As the skin ingested the
ink-memory, Richard was in a sense cannibalised through the relocation of his bodily
memory into my own interiority through a process that operates below the surface.
44
As an act of desperate protest, Amini stitched closed his eyes, lips and ears. Te political
resistance of stopping-up his senses and portals to the world constituted a successful
attempt to overturn the Home Ofces decision. His history haunted the public research as
rearticulated gestures of punctured skin and stopped-up senses.
Richard Hancock and Traci Kclly, !n Tc Parlour, Nottingham, 2006. Photo crcdit: Andy Kcatc.
45
gerprints and sticky marks. Te surface was to remain in-
tact and perfect. Te lure of the inviting texture upon paper
enticed Richard to subversion. Knowing that touching the
wallpaper with his hands would possibly leave a mark, he
chose to make contact with the paper diferently. Waiting
until his parents would leave the house for work, he would
roll his t-shirt above his shoulder blades and, exposing his
skin, he would stand with his back to the wallpaper and rub
up against its texture, back to wall. Te strange inviting sur-
face was a mixed pleasure. Te focking, which was slightly
raised from the paper base, was the texture Richard had
longed to touch. He was not disappointed. As it was raised
from the surface, it was the frst texture to contact his skin
and leave its impression. Te warm, smooth and velvety
feeling against his skin was accompanied by an irritation as
the focking also prickled. Te joy was in the mixed sensa-
tion, and the desire in this subversive act of contact would
resonate into future years.
During the research performances commissioned by
Te Angel Row Gallery the audience donated material in
the form of shared memories that were then utilised to de-
velop a further performance Tattoo, which premiered at the
Spill festival, London 2007. In Te Parlour was an attempt
for me to embody Richards skin memory of the prickly
wallpaper on his back. Tattoo needles that mimicked the
prickliness of focked wallpaper were used to inscribe my
back with the same wallpaper design. Te memory was
painfully etched into the surface of my skin. As the skin
ingested the ink-memory, Richard was in a sense canni-
balised through the relocation of his bodily memory into
my own interiority through a process that operates below
the surface:
Te tattoo substitutes a surface for the actual surface
of the skin: but it does so in a way that plays with the
knowledge that the skin has been penetrated, since the
technique of tattooing in fact requires pigment to be
injected beneath the surface of the skin. Tus what ap-
pears to lie on top of the skin, in fact lies below it. Te
body faunts the surface that it has taken into itself as a
second interiority. Te fact that the tattoo is irremov-
able involves a similarly ambivalent play between injury
and self-defence.
2
Skin as a repository of embodied memory and as a
trans/actional membrane can be highlighted through the
case of Abas Amini, an Iranian Kurdish poet seeking asy-
lum in the UK. He, like Richards memory, was displaced
and seeking refuge elsewhere. In 2003 he was living a cou-
ple of streets away from the tattoo parlour in the Sneinton
Te bonded rice paper would lif the skin, having to be tugged free, and carried with it
traces of skin cells and fne hair. Once free the paper-skin was eaten, ingested by the other,
turning the body inside out as the skin surface was folded into the interior as nourishment.
Skin became a convoluted space as outside was folded back in through ingestion.
46
area of Nottingham.
3
Tough his body bears evidence of
repeated torture verifed by the Medical Foundation for the
Care of Victims of Torture, the Home Ofce had decided
to deport him and send him home to certain death. As an
act of desperate protest, Amini stitched closed his eyes, lips
and ears. Te political resistance of stopping-up his senses
and portals to the world constituted a successful attempt to
overturn the Home Ofces decision.
4
His history haunted
the public research as rearticulated gestures of punctured
skin and stopped-up senses.
Richard sat with his eyes sealed in reference and in
reverence to Abas Amini. As the audience interacted with
Richard they exchanged their own memories for his child-
hood wallpaper memory and disclosed where their memo-
ries were stored in their bodies. As this took place, for each
memory Richard would attach a combat target with a pin
to his skin in the corresponding place, so that he could be
physically aware of their bodily memory within his own.
In Te Parlour can be read as a re-fguration of Amini,
the performers, the tattooist and the audience. Rosi Braid-
otti speaks of [re]fgurations thus,
5
Figurations are there-
fore politically informed images that portray the complex
interaction of levels of subjectivity.
6
Further to this, she
states, Te body as mark of the embodied nature of the
subject thus becomes the site of proliferating discourses
and forms of knowledge, and of normativity.
7

I am refgured from the artist who creates the work to
the canvas as a ground for the ink, as my back is progres-
sively tattooed. Richard refgures Amini as a longhaired,
feminised, artist, negotiator, and as a Freudian counsellor,
teasing out the individual audience members private mem-
ories. Te public are confgured into audience members
and are refgured again into patients and donors. Te tat-
tooist is fgured as a crafsman, and refgured as a showman
and a health professional in his donning of gloves and use
of sterilising equipment. Te tattoo parlour is reconfgured
into the hospital, the theatre, hall of mirrors and the whisky
saloon. Tese multiple fgurations and refgurations, which
Braidotti terms political images, are the proliferation of
shifing subject positions loaded with potential.
Side Dish
I think of a time when Richard became paper-skin
and ate skin-paper. It was in a performance developed by
Heather Uprichard, a founding member of the Shunt col-
lective, for Pacitti Companys Grand Finale.
8
Richard and
Heather, both naked, sat opposite each other. Te surface
of their skins had been covered in rice paper, applied with
a water mist. Te rice paper on contact with moisture had
partially dissolved, and upon drying out had bonded to the
skin, becoming an integrated, uneven surface, like a disor-
dered skin. During the performance the artists would take
it in turn to peel from each other a portion of the skin-pa-
per. Te bonded rice paper would lif the skin, having to
be tugged free, and carried with it traces of skin cells and
fne hair. Once free the paper-skin was eaten, ingested by
the other, turning the body inside out as the skin surface
was folded into the interior as nourishment. Skin became
a convoluted space as outside was folded back in through
ingestion. Beyond the performance, inside became folded
outside, as the skin-paper passed through the digestive
tract and produced waste. Te performance was an abject
spectacle and could be viewed as a perverse private encoun-
ter of consumption of anothers skin.
Dessert
Elspeth Probyn writes on eating skin in relation to ra-
cial discourse, particularly her own white colonial skin in
relation to her Australian Aboriginal lover.
9
She points to-
wards intimate acts of eating and eating out upon the sur-
47
Richard Hancock and Traci Kelly, In Te Parlour, Nottingham, 2006. Photo credit: Andy Keate.
Te
tattooed
body
can be
viewed
as a site of
notional
cannibalism,
both as an
ingesting
organism
and a
repository
for
embodied
memory.
48
face of each others skin. Walking through Redfern, Syd-
ney, in November 2007 on the way to Performance Space
to do the get-in for Open Wound II (Gag Refex), Richard
and I witness a political demonstration by Redferns ghet-
toised indigenous inhabitants. Te protest marked the 40
th

anniversary of the Australian Aboriginal referendum of
1967. Te referendum upgraded the status of Australias
indigenous tribes from Aboriginals to people. Te group
had previously being categorised under the Flora and Fau-
na Act. Having been removed by a kingdom from being
human by injurious nomenclature codes, in the cultural
white imaginary interracial relationships like that of Pro-
byn and her lover were, and sometimes still are, read as
scandalous interspecies afairs.
10
As an artist who works in
and through skin as material and as a site for provoking
thought, I believe there is something to be rescued from
such trafc. Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey suggest in their
writing about Probyn that, Rather than just thinking of
the other as eaten and appropriated, Probyn invites us to
think of eating skin as the transformation of the very bor-
der between self and other: eating skin transforms the one
who eats and the one who is eaten in the very intimacy of
the encounter.
11

Afer Dinner
(Retirement to the drawing room: refections over cofee
with Imperial Mints)
Te tattooed body can be viewed as a site of notional
cannibalism, both as an ingesting organism and a reposi-
tory for embodied memory. In a western context it has tra-
ditionally operated as a site of political resistance to domi-
nant value systems based in the privileging of white skin.
Currently, tattooing is a widely socially accepted form of
expression purloined from ancient tribal practices (includ-
ing Europe) and non-western cultures. Nevertheless, in
2011 when the toy company Mattel launched the tattooed
Barbie doll it also launched a further raf of controversy
surrounding role models for young girls. Tis could be
interpreted as a subtext regarding an anxiety surrounding
interrupted imaginations of whiteness. Conversely, visions
of whiteness in the forms of the Union Jack and the Nazi
Swastika constitute popular tattoos amongst the BNP and
other British far-right communities.
***
Borders are sites of contestation, prone to re-arrange-
ment and dissolution. Skin grows and renews, over time
hard-edged tattoo designs become ill-defned inky land
masses. Returning to the land of my enculturation and the
people of the designs it raises the question of designs of
and for otherness. As I write this article, the BBC news is
reporting the results of the 2011 consensus.
12
It is reported
that the London region now has a white minority, which
creates a scramble by the main political parties to fash-
ion their limited and limiting responses to complex issues
around migration and otherness. It seems timely to end not
with my own words but the voice of an other around ideas
of inscription: It furthers a conversation around cultural
ingestion what Great Britain has become through its im-
perialist exploits, what is seeks to digest or expel in becom-
ing its self .
13
49
NOTES
1. Nick Groom, Te Union Jack: Te Story Of Te British Flag, London:
Atlantic Books, 2006
2. Steven Connor, Te Book of Skin, London: Reaktion Books, 2004, p. 63.
3. Te public research performances took place at D.C. Tattoo Saloon,
23 St. Christopher Street, Sneinton, Nottingham.
4. Abas Amini was inspired in his action by Afghan refugees seeking
asylum in Australia. A very brief report was given in Te Sunday Times
January 20
th
2002, as follows: REFUGEES SEW LIPS TOGETHER:
SEVENTY Afghan refuges have sewn their lips together at a detention
centre in Woomera, South Australia, in a protest about the time it is
taking to process their visa applications. Te immigrants, who entered
the country illegally, are from a group of 270 who are on hunger strike.
Te government says it will refuse to accede to their demands. Te
centre, in a desert 300 miles from Adelaide, houses 860 Middle Eastern
and Afghani asylum seekers. On the 29
th
of May 2003 BBC News
reported that Abas Amini had been successful in overturning the Home
Ofce decision to deport him.
5. Te [re] prefxing fguration is my own addition and emphasis.
6. Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual diference
in Contemporary Feminist Teory, New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994, p.4.
7. Ibid. p.59.
8. Pacitti Company, Grand Finale. Performed at Shunt
Vaults, London. 21
st
April 2007 as part of the Spill Festival.
9. Ed. Sara Ahmed & Jackie Stacey, Tinking Trough the Skin, London,
New York: Routledge, 2001, p.89.
10. Te term kingdom applies to a biological taxonomic rank, which
separates animals and plants. In the case of the indigenous tribes
of Australia being classed as fora and fauna, rather than human,
this is also an injurious imperial act of imposing a white cultures
classifcation system in a discriminatory and disempowering manner.
11. Ed. Sara Ahmed & Jackie Stacey, Tinking Trough the Skin, London,
New York: Routledge, 2001, p.11.
12. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20677515 Accessed 16.12.12
13. An email conversation with Adelaide Bannerman, independent
curator, in response to a frst draf of this article about tattooing
practices, British non-whiteness and non-western cultures. 15th
December 2012
Traci Kelly is an independent scholar whose practice slips and knots between performance, visual and textual languages. Her
poetic and visceral imagery opens up a space for doubt and questions the status of the body. Working solo and collaboratively
Kelly approaches shared making through lone and viral formations. Current research revolves around skin as a site of encounter
and of writing. Te spacings between touch and untouch in performance encounters are utilised to consider subject invention.
Traci Kelly has a doctorate from the University of Reading gained with a project that investigated intersubjectivity and col-
laboration as a methodology for live art practice. Kelly is Co-Artistic Director of hancock & kelly live, a performance company
renowned for its visceral explorations of the politicised body. She has presented work throughout Europe and in Australia,
North and Central America.
50
Like Faces Seen
in Dreams
by ALISTAIR CARTWRIGHT
Satirical cartoons are one of the few places where
judgements based on appearance are not only welcomed
but actually built-in as essential features of a form. Satiri-
cal cartoons are obsessed with the skin of the world and,
no matter the sophistication of their political assessment,
this is where they have to start. In an interview conducted
alongside Martin Rowson, Steve Bell says that the cartoon-
ist aims to get under their [subjects] skin, to [pry] open the
carapace of their image.
1
In Bells cartoons the pink bulge of
David Camerons forehead grows like a balloon; the form
takes over his cheeks, chin and nose, like a clown conjuring
the anatomy of a dog out of knots of trapped air. Te rub-
berised surface of the forehead detaches from the body and
Bell draws Camerons head stuck inside a condom, complete
with teat on the top. Camerons pink complexion dominates
Rowsons images too, but now the hint of a simpering smile
transforms his eyes into two great discs, blue and spotted
like starry skies. Meanwhile George Osborne, with his red
lips and curdled white skin, becomes a kind of child-catcher
fgure, kitted out in black velvet, Danton collar and over-
sized cufs.
Perhaps the only other places where skin is given this
kind of prominence are the fashion and cosmetics indus-
tries. Teir obsession with appearance extends, in circles of
increasing dilution, to advertising, Hollywood, and enter-
tainment culture generally. Of course the big diference is
that whereas these tend to glorify beauty, the satirical car-
toon aims at ugliness, or at least banality. Of all the cartoon-
ists working today, Rowson is perhaps the most in touch
with the ugly side of his medium. In his interpretation of the
Iraq Inquiry, Tony Blair is literally a rotting corpse, with big
ears like tattered hide, one eye hanging out of its socket and
fies swarming around his mouth. Te panel members turn
green and the security guard vomits on the foor, the joke
being that they had to hold the inquiry in private because of
the smell. Fellow cartoonist Michael Heath far to the po-
litical right of Rowsons lef-of-Labour lamented the new
style as lacking thought and being just ugly.
2
Te political diferences between Heath and Rowson are
signifcant. Heath produces a tame comedy of manners, pok-
ing fun at the well-to-do but tinged with contempt for the
plebeian masses. Rowsons vitriol on the other hand knows
no limit. Te elite he attacks efectively give him permission;
playing victim to imaginary horrors is the price they pay
for their privileges in the world at large. Its why drawing
a decapitated Gordon Brown is, in objective terms, a joke
51
(Gerald Scarfe); whereas drawing Mohammed with a bomb
for a turban is, in the same terms, not a joke (the Danish
Jutland Post). One carries out an improbable revenge with
resonance in imagination only, the other joins in a chorus of
quite real Islamophobia with quite real resonances.
What we are talking about, in essence, is class. Te best
satirical cartoons get away with what they do because their
subject is the ruling class. But as far as a representation of
class society goes, you wouldnt necessarily think the car-
toons method was very adequate, bearing as it does on im-
mediate surface appearance rather than human relations,
structures of alienation, or geopolitical shifs, in all their
complexity or apparent obscurity. Rowson himself expresses
this anxiety. Its not so much that cartoons arent taken seri-
ously as art that annoys him; what gets to him is the way they
arent taken seriously as journalism. He recalls dinner parties
where you couldnt go for a piss. You knew as soon as you lef
the room theyd say whats that arsehole doing here?
3
Is this
condescension from journalists and editors simply a form of
philistinism? Satirical cartoons dont lend themselves to in-
gratiation, and politicians attitudes towards cartoonists are
characterised by fear, loathing or Stockholm syndromesque
admiration. But perhaps between these two sentiments there
is something deeper held in common. In the topography of
the newspaper, cartoonists are bottom feeders, says Rowson.
4
Perhaps the loathing, or perverse admiration, for cartoonists
conceals a set of anxieties surrounding the primitive, quasi-
magical powers of mimesis and verisimilitude.
At frst glance this opposition pits the word against the
image, the rational versus the intuitive. But the image in
question is a special kind of image. It is not the kind of im-
age that reaches a peak of perfection in Renaissance paint-
ing, where perspectival space, rich painterly surfaces, and
dramatic condensation combine to produce a living mo-
ment, resonating across eternity.
5
Cartoons are much more
hybrid entities. For a start they usually combine words and
images. And right from the beginning this is indicated by
the fact that satirical cartoons are deployed as illustrations.
In this sense they are a far cry from Greenbergian formal-
ism, with its progressive distillation of a mediums essence.
In the strip cartoon this textual quality of the image, or
imagistic quality of the text, unfolds in a series of panels
that carry the narrative across the individual frames. Film
theorists have ofen made the comparison with cinematic
montage and in this sense the cartoon is eminently mod-
ernist.
6
Rowson himself claims that William Hogarth with
his moralising tales, multipanel works and shock efects
was not only a precursor of the satirical cartoon but also of
modern mass media.
7
Tis interpretation aligns the cartoon
with a view of modernism as technical, dynamic and hy-
brid; concerned with the dissolution of art into life amid the
fux of the everyday.
But what about the single panel, which is the most com-
mon form of the satirical cartoon? While Steve Bell uses
both multiple and single panels, Martin Rowson works al-
most exclusively within the single panel. Bell and Rowson
Perhaps the loathing, or perverse admiration, for cartoonists conceals a set of anxieties
surrounding the primitive, quasi-magical powers of mimesis and verisimilitude.
52
have a lot in common stylistically lurid colours, homo-
geneous density of surface, obscene exaggeration but this
factor marks them out from one another. Many others, with
very diferent styles, also adopt the single panel as their pre-
ferred form, for example Michael Heath, and Ronald Giles,
whose attention to the everyday bears some similarity to
Heath, albeit coloured by anti-authoritarianism and work-
ing class sympathy. We could also mention Ralph Steadman
and Gerald Scarfe, the immediate precursors of Bells and
Rowsons grotesqueries.
In Heath and Giles the single panel becomes a scene. In
most cases the scene is an interior. Giles interiors are bound-
ed by walls, foors and ceilings, perfectly integrated into the
apparently casual, defly composed arrangement of objects
and fgures. Looking at them, you have the impression of
looking into a shoebox diorama or model village. But even
though Heath does without the literal boundaries of an inte-
rior everything foats on the white space of the page his
scenes retain the spatial qualities of one: fgures and objects
distributed across the depth of a shallow perspective, relating
to each other by proximity, as if by force of gravity. His signa-
ture tone the mocking of manners and class exists within
the space of a dinner party, lounge or conference room.
Meanwhile Steadman and Scarfe focus on a single fg-
ure, which swells to fll the page or shrinks into a white
void, becoming gargantuan or pitiful. Hence Steadman
draws Bush as a giant, towering over Baghdad with a car-
toon bomb/globe strapped to his chest. Ofen his fgures
take on a mythic quality, becoming embodiments of war
itself, greed itself, etc. very similar in a way to Hogarths
moralism. Scarfe pursues a similar gigantism for exam-
ple his famous schoolmaster fgure for Pink Floyds Te
Writing on the Wall but he also travels in the opposite
direction, shrinking his fgures to dwarfsh proportions,
making them puny or laughable. See for example his im-
age of Tony Blair with ball and chain around his ankle, his
ears dwarfng the rest of his body, Iraq inscribed on the
huge iron ball.
Te single panel presents a problem for the satirical car-
toon: the full extent of the cartoons meaning its textual
nature, its political narrative or social commentary has to
be condensed in a single image. We could bring up com-
parisons like the history painting or religious allegory, but
whereas these images can depict a vivid moment, or rely on
a traditional stock of symbols, the satirical cartoon has no
recourse to the former and only a weak supply of the latter.
In Giles Te Family series, the cartoon comes as close as it
ever does to naturalism, but the vivid moment is absent. Te
fgures stand stock-still, enveloped in their own pockets of
space, as inert or as lively as the objects they live with. Tey
are part of the furniture, which is the whole point of the sat-
ire: the lumpen, resilient, slightly cantankerous, but essen-
tially unchanging nature of the people represented. Only the
caption, ofen in the form of direct speech, raises the scene
to the climax of a living moment. Take away the caption and
the image becomes strangely uncanny. And while star span-
gled banners, Union Jacks or simply a red or blue tie may
adorn the fgures of Steadman and Scarfe, the vocabulary
of modern political symbolism is shallow compared to reli-
gion and myth. Physiognomy is made to bear the weight of
meaning, not symbolism as such.
Tese limited examples show that there are at least two
famous alternative solutions to the problem. Steve Bell more
or less continues Steadman and Scarfes treatment of the sin-
gle fgure. But in Rowsons cartoons things are very diferent.
Te frst thing you notice is the sheer density of the images.
Tey overfow with fgures, objects, details, patterns, col-
ours and textures. As well as solid things, Rowsons world
is full of evanescent substances, great clouds of smoke, walls
of fre, or rivers of putrid liquid. But for the world to keep its
form, in order for the proliferating details not to sink into an
undiferentiated mass, some kind of backdrop, container or
53
spoon). You could likewise extend this lesson to painting: in
Dada, painting, where it exists, tends towards abstraction and
comes increasingly close to collage or sculpture, towards a
construction or deconstruction of plastic facts (as in Jean Arp
or Kurt Schwitters). In Surrealism on the other hand, paint-
ing survives in a more or less traditionally recognisable form.
Te surfaces of surrealist painting are synthetic, growing out
of a consistent fracture or application. Te diference between
fgure and ground is preserved, as is spatial depth.
What changes is the way these elements are understood.
Te fgures and the spaces are no longer primarily represen-
tational but signifying; the fgures are elements of meaning
to be read against the void of space, like words printed on a
page. Hence the space of Surrealist painting, like the space of
Rowsons cartoons, becomes a desert or a cabinet, a void that
embraces signifying elements. Te elements themselves can
pile up or rarefy, become infnitely dense or sparse, without
in any way damaging the unity of the image; because this
unity is not a concrete space seen in perspective, but a feld of
meaning, a dream space, an hallucination of reality.
If Rowson is surrealist, its not just because he has a sur-
realists sense of the abject and the uncanny; although those
things are important, and Rowson goes as far as including
his very own fur cup (initially with a Starbucks logo on it).
Rowson is surrealist above all because his images presup-
pose the same ontology of meaning. Political signifcance
lodges itself in the crevices of a face, or in the curious
translucency of someones skin, or in the stifness of their
gait, just as unconscious meaning resonates in the surreal-
ist found object. Hence Rowson likens satirical cartoons
to voodoo youre out to damage somebody at a distance
with a sharp object which is the pen.
9
A quasi-literal con-
nection exists between the drawing and its subject. Tis is
the logic behind the cartoons bodily distortions. Like the
portrait of Dorian Gray, the cartoon body is connected to
the real persons soul: When I frst started to draw Blair he
was puppy-like [] but he became more raddled with time.
I used his teeth as a sort of political barometer.
10
Tis con-
nection between cartoon body and real soul is of course
the principle of caricature and therefore common to all sa-
tirical cartoons. In this sense all satirical cartoons believe
in voodoo, and so perhaps do their subjects and onlookers.
Hence the suspicious hostility of journalists and editors, and
the love-hate relationship of politicians: Whats interesting
is the way politicians react they will quite ofen buy the
cartoons as a way of defusing the magic, defusing the voo-
doo, taking back possession of themselves.
11
Te important
thing about Rowsons cartoons is the way he brings out the
surrealist aspect of this principle, by pushing it as far as it
can go and letting it rule over the whole image. Te cartoon
becomes a desert populated by mirages real illusions; a
dream space where the dreams threaten to come true.
Relating satirical cartoons to Surrealism cuts against the
grain, in that the connection with Dada is much more ob-
vious and historically better founded (think of John Heart-
feld for example). Here we come back to the set of opposed
terms that we stumbled on earlier: narration and descrip-
tion, montage and condensation, the multiple panel and the
Political signifcance lodges itself in the crevices of a face, or in the curious translucency of
someones skin, or in the stifness of their gait, just as unconscious meaning resonates in the sur-
realist found object. Hence Rowson likens satirical cartoons to voodoo youre out to damage
somebody at a distance with a sharp object which is the pen.
54
surface must be created, against, within or on top of which
the frenzy can be played out. Sky and horizon are ofen made
to play this role. Te sky becomes a hazy screen, more or less
opaque, while the earth becomes a desert, or failing that the
sand-covered foor of a circus ring. Te recurrence of the
ground-as-desert in Rowsons cartoons is quite incredible.
Te political logic of the motif rolls together Middle East-
ern adventures and the desolation of parliamentary poli-
tics. Here we see Nick Clegg raising his own dismembered
wooden leg, which he has converted into a fail in order to
discipline his own party members, who, far in the distance,
across tiles of cracked ochre earth, are huddled together in
sheep pens. And here an impish Sarkozy, in a hat he seems
to have borrowed from De Gaulle, is kicking sand over a
bloodied Gaddaf. Alternatively Rowson crowds his fgures
together in closed, dark, wood-panelled chambers: here Te
Cabinet becomes the setting of a fairy-tale nightmare.
Rowson talks about James Gillrays infuence on his
work. In Gillrays work all the essential elements of the
satirical cartoon come together for the frst time: pointed
contemporary political signifcance, caricatural distor-
tion, condensation of complex textual meaning. Gillrays
stunning distortions and allegorical theatrics have a lot in
common with Rowson, but we should extend the lineage
to include Surrealism. Rowsons deserts could be straight
out of a painting by Dal, Mir, Tanguy or Ernst. And
the other kind of space that Rowson draws the closed
chamber bears a striking resemblance to Joseph Cornells
boxes, Magrittes illusionistic tablets and shelves, and Frida
Kahlos bedrooms.
Ten there is the element of shock. Te violent imagery
of both surrealism and satirical cartoons is shocking in an
obvious, slightly kitschy kind of way. Both tap into the sup-
posedly bestial fantasies of the unconscious, which takes as
its object of obsession in one case everyday objects, and in
the other politics.
* * *
In order to understand the workings of contemporary
satirical cartoons its worth taking a brief detour via some
of their modernist fliations: namely, Surrealism and Dada,
two early twentieth century avant-gardes that took the ex-
perience of shock as a touchstone of modern life, both in
terms of its banal or horrendous actuality and in terms of
its profanely liberating potential. Of course shock is a key
word for modernism generally. If we start by placing Dada
alongside Surrealism, the two movements seem to have a lot
of common features: for example surprising juxtapositions
and love of absurdity. But at their heart is a fundamental dif-
ference, which is also what binds them together. Take their
respective uses of photography: in Dada the photograph,
like the text, is almost always cut-up, shufed and tacked to-
gether; montage is the key. In Surrealism, however, the pho-
tograph more ofen appears whole. Te surrealists invented
a range of trick techniques to manipulate the image so-
larisation, rayography, double exposure, negative printing,
etc. but the overall integrity of the photograph is almost
always preserved; manipulation takes place within the im-
age. Te diference has to do with what you could call an on-
tology of meaning. In Dada meaning exists between images,
between the photographic fragments of reality; meaning is
constructed or deconstructed. In Surrealism meaning is in
the image itself, in reality itself; reality becomes a signifer, a
text that exists in the world. Te dominant form of surrealist
photography was not montage but the document.
Tis is what Rosalind Krauss shows in her history of
Surrealist photography.
8
You could extend the lesson to the
found object: in Dada it is decontextualised or recontextu-
alised (Marcel Duchamps urinal, rotated 90 degrees, placed
on a plinth in a gallery, signed in marker pen); in Surrealism
it is manipulated, re-moulded or fetishised (Meret Oppen-
heimers fur-cup, Hans Bellmers dolls, Max Ernsts slipper-
55
single panel. What satirical cartoons show very clearly is that
in modernity, these aspects are inseparable. On one side the
satirical cartoon connects to montage and a constructivist or
situationist approach to meaning, the dynamics of mass me-
dia and the fux of modern life. On the other side it connects
to the document and the text, the barometer and the index,
the skin of the world and a certain modern magic.
As a popular art form that arose in the late 18th cen-
tury, satirical cartoons coexist with realism, with the kind
of political consciousness that attempts to grasp the total-
ity of social relations. In their obsession with appearance
and physiognomy they also point forward a few years to
naturalism. But above all they are a prototypical modernist
art form, not just in terms of their speed, contemporane-
ity, or multiplicity what we might call their Dada quali-
ties but also in terms of their Surrealist ones, qualities
which fow out of realism and naturalism but in doing so
overreach them.
Alistair Cartwright has writing published or forthcoming in Te Delinquent and Department poetry magazines, in the London
Consortium journal Static and on the political news and features website Counterre. He helps edit diferentskies.net, an online
publication for experimental criticism and creative non-ction.
NOTES
1. Steve Bell in An Interview with Steve Bell and Martin Rowson 3AM Magazine, 2001, www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/nov2001/bell_and_
rowson_interview.html [accessed 15 January 2013].
2. Michael Heath quoted in Michael Heath Biography British Cartoon Archive, www.cartoons.ac.uk/artists/michaelheath/biography [accessed 15
January 2013].
3. Martin Rowson quoted in Helen Lewis, Ink-Stained Assassins, New Statesman, www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/religion/2012/08/ink-stained-
assassins [accessed 15 January 2013].
4. See Rowsons comments in An Interview with Steve Bell and Martin Rowson, 3AM Magazine.
5. Tis is how Jacques Rancire describes the representational regime in Te Politics of Aesthetics, trans. Gabriel Rockhill, London: Continuum,
2004, pp. 15-16.
6. See for example Sergei Eisenstein, Te Heir in Naum Kleiman and Antonio Somaini (eds.), Notes for a General History of Cinema, forthcoming,
http://flmtheories.org/eisensteintheheir [accessed 15 January 2013].
7. Martin Rowson, Te Grandfather of Satire Tate Etc 9, Spring 2007, www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/grandfather-satire.
8. Rosalind Krauss, Te Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1986, pp. 101-9 and p. 118.
Krauss herself goes on to develop her analysis of Surrealist photography into a method for unpicking and re-reading the whole modernist canon,
discovering the unconscious, the informal and the textual running like a red thread right through the core of modernism.
9. Rowson in An Interview with Steve Bell and Martin Rowson, 3AM Magazine.
10. Martin Rowson quoted in Martin Rowson Biography British Cartoon Archive, www.cartoons.ac.uk/artists/martinrowson/biography [accessed
15 January 2013].
11. Ibid.
57
58
59
Encountering the Skins
of Black Swan and
Te Skin I Live In
by KATHLEEN SCOTT
with images by GEISTE MARIJA KINCINAITYTE
I. Introduction
Scholarship on flm of a phenomenological or haptic
bent has ofen characterised flms and screens as material
bodies: sensual organs with which the bodies of spectators
communicate and engage, if not fesh and blood in the lit-
eral sense of the terms. Phenomenological flm scholars de-
scribe the cinematic screen as a skin through which specta-
tors experience intimate and tactile encounters with flmic
images. It is no surprise then that spectators ofen form
physically unsettling, yet intimate bonds with flms in which
violence is done to the skin. Te disturbingly tactile style in
which psychologically tense and melodramatic flms such
as Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) and La piel que
habito/Te Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodvar, Spain, 2011),
present scenes of skin mutilation allows the bodies of spec-
tators to both approach and withdraw from the mutating
skins on-screen and of the screen, in a double movement
that both invites and wards of painful contact between
spectatorial and cinematic fesh.
However, these physical responses to afective cinematic
stimuli have ofen been mischaracterised as wholly natural
in origin. I propose that the physically and psychologically
unsettling presentations of pellicular mutilation in Black
Swan and Te Skin I Live In illustrate the gendered dynamics
in operation in the production and reception of sensational
cinematic afect. To a certain extent, both flms draw on a
legacy of cinematic melodramas that construct the interior
lives and bodily experiences of its female characters in ways
that were intended to register physically and emotionally
with female spectators; the question to be explored here is
how and to what extent Black Swan and Te Skin I Live In
59
60 60
61
replicate this gender-specifc construction of afect through
the skins of their female protagonists. Tese flms depictions
of the skin as an unstable surface or boundary between self
and world, self and other, and male and female allow desta-
bilisations of identity (gender and otherwise) to take place.
II. Te Cinematic Screen as Skin
Literary theorist Steven Connor provides a thorough his-
tory of Western thought on the skin in Te Book of Skin. He
distinguishes between three stages in this thinking of skin.
In the classical medical view, prominent in the 18
th
century,
the skin was understood primarily in its roles as a covering
that keeps the body inviolate.
1
Skin gradually began to be
seen as its own organ in the 19
th
century, and took on a me-
chanical function as a membrane through which particles
and waste passed. Te contemporary view of skin identifed
by Connor, the stage of most interest here, is its function as
a site of encounters between bodies. Here Connor describes
the skin as a milieu that operates as a place of minglings, a
mingling of places.
2
Te skin thus functions as a haptic or-
gan that touches both the inside and outside of bodies, cre-
ating links between subjectivity, skin and touch, in whose
intersections can be felt the act of cinema spectatorship.
From a phenomenological perspective, the cinematic
screen can be characterised as a form of embodied fesh, es-
pecially concerning flms within the horror and melodrama
genres such as Black Swan and Te Skin I Live In that aim to
stimulate physical and emotional responses in the bodies and
minds of spectators. Several prominent phenomenological
flm theorists have characterised flm as a feshy membrane
with which the bodies of spectators make contact. Laura
U. Marks describes the cinematic screen as a skin through
which spectators establish tactile relations with flmic images
that evoke shared cultural memories.
3
Vivian Sobchack has
written about her experience of embodied thought and on-
tological confusion felt through the skin when viewing flms
such as Te Piano (Jane Campion, 1993).
4
Tarja Laine also conceives of the screen as a skin shared
between spectators and flm via physically afective imagery.
Laine describes skin as a medium of intersubjective con-
nection
5
between the screen and spectators that structures
spectators encounters with flm. Laine astutely observes
that many horror and thriller flms betray an obsessive inter-
est in the connections between skin and subjectivity within
their diegeses, and express this preoccupation in brutal and
disturbing aesthetic registers that mimetically enact the mu-
tilations and transformations of the skin occurring in their
narratives. Examples range from Georges Franjus classic
horror flm Les yeux sans visage/Eyes Without a Face (1959),
the many transformations of the skin in the body-horror of
David Cronenberg, the dramatic crime thriller Te Silence
of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991), to recent flms such
as Black Swan and Te Skin I Live In, to name but a few.
Spectators experiences of bodily terror and disturbance
inspired by the mutilations of the fesh in these flms dove-
tail with psychoanalytic understandings of the role played
by the skin in constituting and containing the psychic egos
of individual subjects. Te importance of skin in establish-
ing subjectivity helps us to understand why its mutilation
has become a privileged site of horror in the cinema. Laine
explains that the stripping of the skin stands for horror for
both female and male viewers: the fayed [characters] rep-
resent a threat to the inner and outer border through which
subjectivity is constituted.
6
Te proximity of flmic and
spectatorial skins transgresses the borders between the two
in the intimacy of potential contact that efaces our secure,
self-contained subjectivities.
Te skin thus functions as both a membrane containing
individual identity as well as a medium through which the
self is shared with the world exterior to it. Te mutilation of
the various skins of the characters, spectators and the flm it-
61
62
self involved in horror flm spectatorship is simultaneously a
marking out of individual identities and an exposing of one-
self to the world it is a contact with the world of flm via
afective experiences of painful physicality and emotion. It is
exactly this embodied contact with cinematic pain that spec-
tators are invited to experience when watching Black Swan.
III. Black Swan: Contagion and Contact
Black Swan depicts the gradual physical and psychologi-
cal metamorphoses of Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), a bal-
lerina in a famed New York City ballet company. Nina is an
obsessive perfectionist who lives with her exceedingly over-
bearing mother (Barbara Hershey) in a cramped and claus-
trophobic apartment, and who dreams of winning the lead-
ing roles in the companys new version of Swan Lake. Te
companys sadistic and lecherous director Tomas (Vincent
Cassel) gives Nina the roles of both the White and Black
Swans on the condition that she delve into her dark side in
order to better embody the spirit of the sexually alluring and
manipulative Black Swan. Ninas attempts to embody the
Black Swan fuel her accelerating physical and psychologi-
cal transformations, which culminate in a deranged yet tri-
umphant performance of both swans at the end of the flm,
during which Nina may or may not die herself by becoming
the suicidal White Swan.
Tose familiar with the aesthetic and narrative tropes
of visceral European New Extremist flms will recognise
these in Hollywoodised form in Black Swan: the wounding
of bodies, explicit sexual content, violent and predatory re-
lations between men and women and aesthetic techniques
that mimic the extreme psychological and physical hysteria
and damage of the characters. Tese stylistic particulars of
Black Swan establish it as a violent, wounding body whose
disturbing afect can be felt on the skins of spectators. We
can take, for example, the tactile qualities of the camera-
work. Aronofsky constantly employs tightly framed, claus-
trophobic following shots of Nina that draw us into her
physical and psychological neuroses and compel us to
share space with her nervous, twitchy presence. Trough-
out the flm, the claustrophobic camera clinging to Ninas
every move compels spectators to physically engage with
her as she stretches her bodily endurance to the limit. Tis
constricting atmosphere creates confned spaces of bodily
compassion, facilitated by our nearness to her physical and
psychological torments. We feel a proximity to Nina as her
physical and mental unravellings progress.
When Nina begins to experience the physical distor-
tions of her body that mark her transformation into the
Black Swan, these are also conveyed in a tactile register. Te
camera dwells in uncomfortable extreme close-up as a hys-
terical Nina rips barbed black feathers out of her skin, the
individual goose pimples and her bloodshot eyes flling the
screen like landscapes. Tese scenes are reminiscent of the
way the body of the female protagonist is used as a land-
scape in certain New Extremist flms that are concerned
with dangerous and abnormal female bodily experience,
such as Claire Deniss Trouble Every Day (2001) and Marina
de Vans Dans ma peau/In My Skin (2002).
Te physically disturbing aesthetics of Ninas disobedi-
ent, outof-control body eventually come to include sur-
real mutilations of her skin and sudden embodiment of
animal physicality and features. Ninas skin begins to turn
into black, shiny scales as she descends deeper into madness
and transforms physically into the Black Swan. Te severe
discomfort and fear that she experiences through these pel-
licular transformations becomes magnifed for spectators
through the sensual depiction of her skin as a surface of
tingling sensations: the aural intensity of Ninas scratching
and the close proximity of the camera places spectators in a
space contiguous to her skin. Te discomfort-inducing aes-
thetics expressing the strange sensations on Ninas skin thus
62
63 63
64 64
65
becomes a palpable contagion that spreads to spectators and
encourages a bodily engagement with the screen.
Te immediate sensuality of these transformations
oblige spectators to share physical space with Nina and the
flm, establishing a contact-in-separation with the violent
aesthetics in which the transformation of Ninas body is
conveyed. Te circulation of physical energy between the
skins of character, screen and spectators is palpable in the
moments in which spectators share in the physicality of
Ninas psychosis and transformations into the Black Swan.
IV. Te Skin I Live In: Gender Identity and Transformation
Te Skin I Live In is a melodramatic thriller centring on
genetic researcher and plastic surgeon Robert Ledgards (An-
tonio Banderas) obsessive quest to reincarnate his deceased
wife in the skin of another woman. Afer Roberts wife Gal
sufers a car crash that leaves her skin horribly burned and
mutilated, she commits suicide, leaving her husband and
young daughter Norma (Blanca Surez) emotionally scarred.
Years later, a grown but emotionally fragile Norma is raped
by shopkeeper Vicente (Jan Cornet) at a wedding reception
and goes mad before dying herself. In order to exact revenge,
Robert kidnaps Vicente and performs a forced sex change on
him. Vicente becomes Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya), trapped in
a room in Roberts house with the face of the deceased Gal
grafed over his/her former features.
While Te Skin I Live In is not a physically afective flm
in the extreme manner of Black Swan, its narrative never-
theless explores similar territories; namely, the role played
by the skin in the establishment and destabilisation of cor-
poreal identity. Almodvars flm uses elements of horror
and melodrama to focus on skin and gender as focal points
for the construction of identity and corporeal experience,
stripping bare the borders of strict gender dichotomies in
the process.
Te Skin I Live In clearly articulates a connection be-
tween the skin and identity, particularly relating to ones sex
and gender. Robert hopelessly believes that he can resurrect
his wife by recreating her skin in Vera, and that his former
life will be restored to him afer the grafing has taken place.
In this manner he complies with psychoanalyst Didier An-
zieus theory that individuals skin comprises their egos.
Anzieu characterises the skin as a mental image of which
the ego of the child makes use during the early phases of its
development to represent itself as an ego containing psychi-
cal contents, on the basis of the experience of the surface
of the body.
7
In Te Skin I Live In and its French anteced-
ent Eyes Without a Face, the skin fgures as a guarantor of
isolated, autonomous subjectivity and a physical marker of
unique identity. Both narratives centre around quests on the
part of fanatical and deranged male doctors to bring back a
dead or severely injured female loved one by returning their
damaged skins to their original wholeness and beauty. In
the eyes of their friends and family, the people within these
damaged skins are dead to the world. Te skin encases the
personality and efectively constitutes the subject; the muti-
lation of this membrane annihilates subjectivity and com-
pletely estranges the mutilated subject from their body and
former self.
However, Almodvar innovates on this connection be-
tween psychic ego and skin by presenting both as fuid con-
structions, rather than static and immovable structures. In
Live Flesh: Te Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema,
Santiago Fouz-Hernndez and Alfredo Martnez-Expsito
discuss contemporary transformations in the ways in which
the male body is presented in Spanish cinema, and the links
these transformations have to changing socio-political and
cultural ideas about bodily normality and perfection. Of
particular interest are their discussions of sex change in the
flms of Almodvar, and how these relate to conceptual un-
derstandings of the fesh and gender norms. According to
65
66
67
the authors, the modifcations of the body and skin in flms
of Almodvars such as Te Skin I Live In construct bodily
identity as a fuid process of mutability and transformation,
rather than an inert, fundamental feature.
8
In this regard,
the skins of characters are just as changeable as their gender
identities, refecting the fact that trans-sexuality operates as
a form of extreme (body) transvestism, with the bodys skin
as the clothing that the subject needs changing.
9

Te modifcations and mutations of the skin and gender
identity enacted through the character of Vicente/Vera in
Te Skin I Live In thus present a body in fux that is pre-
subjective (if we understand normative notions of subjec-
tivity as those that demand a pre-constituted, completely
autonomous and unchanging self) in a way that engages
with a gender-based deconstructive questioning of identity
combined with a cultural promotion of gender fuidity and
performance.
10
V. Melodramatic Afect and the Skin
Regarding the afective impact of Black Swan and Te
Skin I Live In on the fesh of spectators, we must also attend
to the fact that these flms ft within the cinematic genres of
horror and melodrama. Linda Williams names horror and
melodrama as two of the key body genres in her seminal
1991 article Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess. Here
Williams defnes horror, melodrama and pornography as
cinematic body genres that operate in a sensational regis-
ter, privileging emotional and afective spectacle over linear
and coherent narratives. Williams identifed four features
shared across the three body genres. Firstly, body genres
flms ofen feature a body swept up in uncontrollable sen-
sual or emotional experience. Secondly, such sensual or
emotional experiences are ofen coded as ecstatic, sexually
or otherwise. Tirdly, these sensually saturated and ecstatic
bodies are most ofen female. Lastly, spectators mimic, of-
67
68
tentimes unconsciously, the sensual and emotional experi-
ences undergone by the bodies on-screen (examples of this
mimicry could include crying when the women on-screen
weep in melodramas, or screaming when the terrorised
high school girls scream in horror, etc).
11

Film genre scholar Deborah Tomas echoes Williams by
arguing that cinematic melodramas in particular encourage
certain bodily states which are adopted in response
12
to
what spectators encounter on-screen. Tomas gives special
purchase to Williams claim that spectators may uncon-
sciously (and to varying extents) mimic the emotions and
gestures happening on-screen, establishing a shared space
in which diegetic worlds collide with those of spectators.
Tomas writes that
melodramatic characters are far more likelyto experi-
ence the mood or feel of their narrative world in ways
that match viewers experiences of itan acute aware-
ness of the conditions of a flms narrative world and, in
consequence, the eliciting of an appropriate emotional
response to the broader picture belongs mainly to us.
13

So, if a form of mimicry takes place between characters
and spectators, this is enacted both emotionally and physi-
cally: through psychological and thoughtful engagement,
but also through the surfaces of bodies, through the skin
and viscera. Indeed, recent scholarship suggests that the
skin plays a heightened role in our perception of melo-
dramatic and horrifc narratives and afect in the cinema.
Scholars such as Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason note
that sense receptors in the skin function on both the inside
and the outside of the body.
14
Tis suggests that afective
and emotional responses to flm such as fear, disgust and
sadness lower the physiological resistance of the skin to its
environment, creating a space of contact-in-separation be-
tween cinematic and spectatorial skins in which the bodies
of both resonate along similar afective and emotional tra-
jectories suggested by the content of the flm and the stylis-
tic registers in which its content is presented.
However, it would be nave and rather simplistic to im-
agine that all spectators exhibit uniform physical and emo-
tional responses to certain melodrama and horror flms.
Although there is a wide variety of socio-political, histori-
cal and cultural factors that we could consider in exploring
spectators emotional and afective responses to melodrama
and horror, here I would like to focus on gender as a bio-
political axis structuring the experience of emotion and
physical gesture in flm, particularly those involving the
skin. Namely, the question is: do spectators physical and
emotional responses to mutilations of the skin-ego in melo-
drama and horror break down strictly separated masculine/
feminine systems of address, or are they more physically
and emotionally relevant to female or feminine-identifed
viewers? Te narrative trajectories of many melodramatic
flms may suggest the former, in that they depict experi-
ences commonly faced by women in emotionally and af-
fectively heightened registers. For example, Tomas argues
that melodramas
typically contrast a social space of some sortwith an
alternative spacewhere social values and expectations
to some extent break downinherent in the normal so-
cial space, where men and women settle down together
in marriage and domesticity, are corresponding male
and female versions of fantasies which emphasise the
struggles for dominance between men and women in
what is a rigidly hierarchical world.
15

Relationships between men and women in melodramatic
flms are therefore presented as a battleground where the
couple engages in a struggle for dominance.
16
Female spec-
tators may (consciously or unconsciously) feel or recognise
68
69
parallels with their own experiences of gender discrimina-
tion here, as the repressiveness of the melodramatic seems
to be partly a result of its reproduction of the hierarchies of
power and status which structure our own world outside
the flms.
17
In both worlds, the possibilities open to women
within the melodramatic narrative world arelimited, giv-
en their more lowly position within hierarchies of power.
18

Filmic melodramas that centre around a female protagonists
suferings of gendered power hierarchies and inequalities
ofen result in narratives such as those in Black Swan and
Te Skin I Live In, in which this female protagonist enacts
fantasies of power
19
that counteract the lack of agency she
experiences in real life; for evidence of this, we can see the
triumphant sexuality of Nina in her fnal performance of the
Black Swan in Black Swan, or Veras shooting of Robert and
his secret mother Marilia (Marisa Paredes) and escape from
his laboratory/house at the end of Te Skin I Live In.
In the former case, Ninas sexual and physical empower-
ment is literally enacted on and through her skin, through
the shiny black feathers and reptilian scales that mark her
transformation into the Black Swan. In the moments of her
triumphant performance, female spectators may have emo-
tional and physical responses that more closely mimic or
approximate those of Nina, given the higher likelihood of
shared feelings of sexual insecurity and powerlessness due to
gender inequalities prominent in both the real and diegetic
worlds. Te relationship of female spectators to Vera in Te
Skin I Live In is complicated by the fact that Vera was born
with a male body (Vicente), and only became female afer
Robert performed a sex change operation without Vicentes
knowledge or consent. However, Vicente/Vera only expe-
riences powerlessness and entrapment afer becoming a
woman, and so female spectators may still identify and em-
pathise with Vera more directly because of the intersections
between femininity and powerlessness that the flm reveals.
Take, for example, the scene in which Gals former lover
(and Roberts secret half-brother) Zeca (Roberto lamo)
rapes Vera. At this point, spectators are unaware that Vera
is a transsexual. Audience members may thus form an em-
pathetic relation with Vera based on learned responses to
the violation of the female body. Julianne Pidduck, writing
about the rape of transsexual Brandon Teena in Boys Dont
Cry (Kimberly Pearce, 1999), notes that
it is the violation ofthe female body that commands
a much more universal pathos. According to western
representational codes of gender violence, the explicit
beating and kicking of a womans body (particularly a
young, pretty, white, middle-class womans body) is ta-
boo.
20

Te hierarchy of knowledge presented through the
flms narrative organisation therefore allows spectators to
consider Vera a female body, and respond to its violation
accordingly.
Te stylistic design of Te Skin I Live In, including the
presentation of the rape scene, is relatively subdued in com-
parison with the exaggerated dramatic and horrifc elements
of Black Swan. Tis perhaps results in a lower level of pel-
licular engagement with the screen. However, the skin still
fgures heavily as a narrative trope in the former flm ex-
ploring the relationship between femininity, gender hierar-
chies and cinematic afect. Veras new hyper-protective and
resistant feminine skin plays a determining role in his/her
becoming-woman: this skin both protects (it is immune to
malaria and other types of infection contracted through the
skin) and endangers (her physical likeness to Gal exposes
Vera to the threat and reality of rape, a crime she previously
committed against Norma when she was a man); surrounds
and sufocates; cuts Vicente of from his former life and al-
lows Vera to break free of Roberts entrapment and return to
family and friends.
69
70
Te skin is thus both a membrane containing individual
identity as well as a medium through which the self trans-
formed and shared with the world exterior to it. Regard-
ing cinematic spectatorship, the skin operates as a sensory
organ through which spectators establish afective relations
with flm. Te stimulative transformation of the skins in-
volved in spectatorship expresses unique bodily identities,
and also exposes these identities to worldly experiences of
physical and emotional pain, disruption and mutation.
NOTES
1. Steven Connor, Te Book of Skin, London: Reaktion Books, 2004, p. 10.
2. Ibid, p. 26.
3. Laura U. Marks, Te Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema,
Embodiment, and the Senses, Durham and London: Duke University
Press, 2000.
4. Vivian Sobchack, Carnal Toughts: Embodiment and Moving Image
Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, p. 66.
5. Tarja Laine, Cinema As Second Skin: under the membrane of horror
flm New Review of Film and Television Studies 4,2, 2006, p. 93.
6. Ibid, p. 103.
7. Didier Anzieu, Te Skin Ego, trans. by Chris Turner, New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1989, p. 40.
8. Santiago Fouz-Hernndez and Alfredo Martnez- Expsito, Live
Flesh: Te Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema, London: I.B.
Tauris, 2007, p. 154.
9. Ibid, p. 140.
10. Ibid, p. 154.
11. Linda Williams, Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess, Film
Quarterly 4, 1991, p. 4.
12. Deborah Tomas, Beyond Genre: Melodrama, Comedy and Romance
in Hollywood Films, Mofat: Cameron & Hollis, 2000, p. 12.
13. Ibid, p. 13.
14. Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason, Introduction in Dee Reynolds
and Matthew Reason (eds.), Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and
Cultural Practices, Bristol: Intellect, 2012, pp. 17-25, 18.
15. Tomas, Beyond Genre, p. 13.
16. Ibid, p. 4.
17. Ibid, p. 25.
18. Ibid, p. 60.
19. Ibid, p. 30.
20. Julianne Pidduck, Risk and Queer Spectatorship, Screen 42,1, 2001,
pp. 101-2.
70
71
Kathleen Scott is a PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews. Her thesis explores the ethical relationship of spectators to
violent flmic aesthetics, incorporating elements of feminist and haptic flm theory, as well as the flm-philosophies of Gilles Deleuze
and Jean-Luc Nancy.
Geiste Marija Kincinaityte is currently studying BA Media and Communications at Goldsmiths. Her photography practice
informs academic research and vice versa. Hence, photography for her becomes a tool for further investigation of reality a means
for a visual research. Te main themes in her both theoretical and practical works are on memory, cognition, technology and media
philosophy, intellectual imagination, the ontology of the image, cultural memory, the uncanny, and interrelations between cinema
and photography. Her portfolio can be viewed at http://cargocollective.com/geiste.
71
72
Between Dialectics
and Deconstruction
Interview with CATHERINE MALABOU
by MARK RAINEY
with images by EMILY SPEED
Catherine Malabou and I meet in the basement of a caf near Russell Square, London and over cofee and with the theme
of skin in mind, record an interview exploring some of the diferent trajectories within her philosophy. At once thoughtful and
deliberative, attentive and warm, Catherine discusses plasticity a key element of her thought and its engagement with a
range of domains including medical science, political theology, deconstruction and gender theory. In this respect, the interview
catches a glimpse of the depth and scope of her thought. Catherine is Professor of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston
University and has written ground-breaking work on the philosophy of Hegel, including Te Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Tem-
porality and Dialectic which is based on her PhD undertaken with Jacques Derrida. Other works translated into English
include Changing Diference and What Should We Do With Our Brain? Her forthcoming work Self and Emotional Life:
Merging Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience is co-authored with Adrian Johnston and is published by Columbia
University Press.
73
74
75
MARK RAINEY: Plasticity is a key component of your
thought. To give an all-too-brief defnition, it is the dual
ability to both give and receive form and emerges from both
an open reading of Hegel and also from your engagement
with medical science. In this respect, it operates as a philo-
sophical concept while also being thoroughly embodied.
Can you further elucidate this relationship between thought
and embodiment in your understanding of plasticity?
CATHERINE MALABOU: I like the word embodiment
which means an operation, something that is not already
constituted or made. Te idea of plasticity in Hegel implies
that you are, in a way, the author of your own spirit, your
spirits shape. You can say exactly the same thing about the
body. In Hegel you also have the idea that the way in which
you shape your spirit is also a way to embody spirit itself.
Tats why in the Phenomenology of Spirit you have two
chapters on the body in which Hegel explains that the soul
is the sculpture of the body. He says the soul is the bodys
form. So, that was my starting point: plasticity in Hegel was
not only a spiritual movement but also a corporeal mode of
shaping. Of course it was very helpful to explore neurosci-
ence because the brain is both the locus of the spirit and the
body, what Meillassoux calls the organism. He says that the
brain is the organism which is a mix between body and soul.
MR: Plasticity, introduced in your work Te Future of He-
gel, has been deployed along multiple trajectories including
gender theory, neurobiology, theology and as an engage-
ment with Derrida (to name a few). Has your understand-
ing of plasticity evolved during these engagements? What is
the future of plasticity?
CM: For me plasticity was a leading thread that helped me
to explore, as you said, a lot of domains and questions. It
will have to come to an end at some point. At the moment
Im, in a way, completing the trajectory. First of all with
a book on Kant which asks the question is there a plas-
ticity of the transcendental? Im working on the analogy
between reason and epigenesis which Kant develops in the
frst Critique. So, the last steps will be on Kant and the plas-
ticity of the transcendental and Ill fnish what Ive already
started on biopolitics and the confrontation between Fou-
cault and the form of plasticity. Ten Ill do something else.
So, the future of plasticity is already contained in its past.
Now all the little seeds Ive tried to implant need to grow
and develop.
MR: Can you explain epigenesis?
CM: Te frst philosophical occurrence is in Aristotle. He
uses it to describe the way in which the living being forms
itself. It means above genesis. It is something prior to gen-
esis and more fundamental. Ten it became a major concept
in the 18
th
century with the confict between epigenesis on
the one hand and preformation on the other. Preformation-
ists argue that the embryo is already pre-formed. It is an
adult in miniature which just develops quantitatively. Epi-
genesis, rather, is the theory according to which the embryo
develops itself by auto self-diferentiation and the growing
of new parts. Tis is the 18
th
century meaning and now you
have the contemporary meaning which is the non-genetic
changes in the phenotype. It is something which is not
pre-programmed.
MR: To go back to plasticity, you have discussed it in rela-
tion to Derridas account of deconstruction. Plasticity is not
to be understood as a cut, imprint or erasure of a text as is
the case with Derridas notion of graphic trace, but rather as
a metamorphosis. Plasticity, with its ability to be both trans-
forming and transformed, suggests both an inner activity as
well as an external fuse. What is the role of boundary in this
76
metamorphosis? Boundary is meant broadly here and could
mean the limit or law of a concept, the surface of the brain,
the skin of a body.
CM: I think these are two questions in one. First of all, re-
garding Derrida, he says somewhere I think it is at the
end of Difrance in Margins of Philosophy that difrance
with an a will have to be superseded. It will have to be re-
placed by another model than that of writing. And I think
the time has come to substitute something diferent for
writing, for the trace, and this is what Im trying to do with
plasticity. Te problem with the trace is that the trace is a
movement that constantly displaces itself without changing
form. Te trace has no form, it is just what Derrida calls the
trait, the line. Difrance never touches the problem of the
internal change of form what youve called metamorpho-
sis. I think this has to emerge. And also the formation of the
neural connections in the brain is a change of form. Tere
is no imprint. Te old model of the imprint is disappearing
now from neuroscience. So, this has to be integrated into
the philosophical concept of difrance.
About metamorphosis per se if you read Ovid, meta-
morphosis is never one. Metamorphosis happens several
times. You can never have only one. If you change form it
means that youre able to change form again, to change that
form. If you look at the book by Ovid, you see that meta-
morphosis is a long series of metamorphoses in which each
form transforms itself. Te boundary is between two forms
in the same form. It is the way in which a form always con-
tains within itself the possibility of becoming another form.
Te limit and boundary is internal, it is not exterior. Its like
a membrane between form and itself. So, its interesting to
read Ovids Metamorphosis because you see the long devel-
opment of one form in the beginning. Te notion of the skin
is interesting here because according to the metamorphic
model the skin as a boundary is internal.
MR: You have also written about the recuperative abilities of
plasticity. It is at once a rediscovery and re-launching of con-
cepts in past philosophical writings (plasticity itself is taken
from Hegel) and is also a form of healing and auto-repair.
Yet, repair in this sense is not simply a recovery of what has
gone before, but is instead inventive. Te skin stem-cell is
taken as an example here, as it has the ability to transform
into other types of cells. It is, as you say, the regeneration of
diference. In view of this, is there a possible ethics of repair?
CM: Tis is very interesting and again brings us back to Der-
rida and the question of the diference between difrance
and plasticity. Derrida was obsessed with the image of the
graf. It is true that at that time to repair burned skin, for
example, grafing was the only way. So, the question Der-
rida ofen asked was how can Otherness and Sameness be
grafed? Tis is what he also calls hetero-afection and this is
very well developed by Jean-Luc Nancy in Te Intruder where
he talks about this grafed art. Of course, with the discovery
of stem-cells relatively recently in 1990, the paradigm of the
graf becomes obsolete. Its now not so much about grafing
someone elses skin onto yours, but to develop and regener-
ate your own skin by using the resources of your skin stem-
cells. Its self-replacement instead of the graf. It means that
the type of repairment plasticity allows is a self-regenerative
model. Te individual is potentially able to replace himself
or herself. Te ethics is a very difcult question because with
the graf or transplant this procedure still occurs, of course
the question was how you can live with somebody elses
heart or skin. It was the question of oneself and the Other
an ethics of the Other. Now its a diferent question. Scientists
used to make us think that it was a problem with the embryo
and embryonic stem cells. But now this problem is solved
because we are now able to produce embryonic stem-cells
out of adult stem-cells by de-diferentiating them. Te prob-
lem is no longer the embryo itself.
77
78
MR: It seems to shif ethical discourse away from self and
other.
CM: Yes, but where does it go? Te self-and-other based
on the use of embryonic stem-cells very soon wont be a
problem at all. But, what is it? Why all these barriers against
stem-cell research? I must say that I dont understand, apart
from the cost of it, as it is very expensive. It is a question of
democracy. Who is able to aford this kind of therapy? But,
outside of that, I cant see where the ethical problem is.
MR: To take this ethical discussion in a diferent direction,
what would be the importance of the metamorphic poten-
tial of plasticity, embodiment and skin itself in relation to
Levinas face-to-face ethical encounter?
CM: Well, when you say skin or metamorphosis even, it
always implies a notion of contact. Skin is something you
can touch. Also, when you were talking about boundary,
boundary as limit, it is always the contact between two sur-
faces. So, its about tact, contact, touching, contiguity and
nearness. All these concepts Levinas refuses defnitely. Te
expression face-to-face is a bit elusive because we could
understand face-to-face as a kind of proximity of contact,
but on the contrary for Levinas it is absolute distance. It is
irreducible distance. In that sense the skin would not at all
be for him a satisfactory image of the encounter with the
Other.
You know, in French we have this diference between
visage and face, so in English it is more difcult. For Levinas
the face is something without features. It is like a phenome-
non which appears, where the Other appears totality fragile
and exposed. It is not touchable. If you want to touch it, it
escapes and its not even sure that this face itself has a skin.
It can be a mask or just a gaze. Tats why Levinas is very
critical of the notion of form. In Totality and Infnity you
have this critique of shape, form, metamorphosis. Te face
does not have form.
MR: To give this a more concrete context, how can this be
understood in view of the Palestinian-Israeli confict?
CM: Tis asks the question of mediation and mediation is a
kind of contact as well. A medium, for Hegel, is something
which touches both sides of the confict. Levinas refuses
that because he thinks its not ethical. What he says, which
is very strange but also very interesting, is that Arabs and
Jews share the same Bible. It is through the reading of the
same text. It is a re-visitation of the fundamental principles
of ethics through the text which is very important. It is not
direct, it is not a contact, rather it is through the interven-
tion of reading the Torah, the Old Testament and the Koran.
You know that he gave lectures on the Torah? He has three
books from these lectures. He thinks that the resolution of
the confict is hermeneutical. It is like a text and enemies are
like chapters and they cannot read each other, in a way. So,
he has this metaphor of knowing how to interpret and read
the Other as a text. I know this is not very concrete, but this
is what he precisely opposes in the West. He says in the West
nobody sees conficts like that, instead saying we need me-
diators. In fact confict is always a confict of meanings, so
there is a hermeneutical activity which should be developed
how to read it properly.
MR: For Levinas, this hermeneutic should be brought to the
fore rather than an outside mediator?
CM: He has a very interesting book which is called In the
Time of the Nations. I think I will teach it sometime this year.
And he shows that each nation has a place in the Bible its
very interesting. Te Bible as a metaphor of the world. It is a
series of lectures he gave when he was a lecturer at a Jewish
79
Metamorphosis happens
several times. You can
never have only one. If
you change form it means
that youre able to change
form again, to change
that form.
Erasing all sexual dif-
ference is also a violent
gesture [...] it does jus-
tice to many people and
many things which were
hidden or repressed be-
fore, but at the same
time it also erases.
80
school. And he relates all of these questions, which at the
beginning seem totally disconnected from our reality, and
shows that they are in fact all political questions. And all
pertain to how to read the Other.
MR: His position is very non-Hegelian, then.
CM: It is anti-Hegelian, totally. In fact there is no dialectics
in the movement of the text. And I think Derridas concept of
writing very much comes from there, very much comes from
Levinas. Writing and reading as the foundation of ethics.
MR: In your writings on gender theory you have questioned
some of the anti-essentialism of contemporary feminism and
suggested that a consequence of anti-essentialism is a certain
lack of agency, where a woman does not defne herself and
cannot defne herself except by the violence done to her. Do
you think there is a need for a strategically based essential-
ism in feminist theory and is this dependent on certain stra-
tegic connections between the feminine and woman?
CM: I think the connection between the feminine and the
woman is not necessary. Te feminine is more important.
Again, Levinas calls the feminine openness and Irigaray
talks about the lips. Of course, this pertains to feminine
anatomy. If you defne the feminine as the openness, the
welcoming, the threshold, it does not have to be specifcally
attached to the woman per se, but to some kind of exposure,
to some kind of fragility. What I think is that this feminin-
ity of the open has to be defended because in gender you
have this anonymity, this refusal of any diference between
the masculine and the feminine. If you refuse to identify
the masculine with man and the feminine with woman, you
can still maintain that gender is diferentiated, in the sense
of the passivity in front of violence this defencelessness.
Of course, in my book I said we could say the same things
about the animals or the children, but precisely we might
call the feminine this kind of passivity. You see what I mean?
Tis absence of aggressivity, of defence.
MR: Is there a strategic purpose in approaching the femi-
nine in this way, in terms of taking gender theory forward?
CM: Yes. Yes, because at some point erasing all sexual dif-
ference is also a violent gesture. So it does justice to many
people and many things which were hidden or repressed be-
fore, but at the same time it also erases. For example, the big
problem of the entire woman / violence.
MR: Can these criticisms be connected to post-colonial cri-
tiques of mainstream feminism? By this I mean the view
that categories such as race or a connection to land can dis-
appear under the wider notion of gender.
CM: Tis is very interesting. In fact, there has been a rever-
sal of the initial meaning and purpose of gender studies. In
the beginning gender studies was fghting against universal-
ity and the universality of the human subject and even the
feminine subject and masculine subject as universal catego-
ries. Te claim was that we have to particularise. In fact now
it functions as an erasure of particularities in a way, because
you cannot refer, as weve just said, to the feminine, the mas-
My plasticity in fact is neither one nor the other. It is just the middle. Tis is exactly where
I am: between Hegel, who is so important and still important for me, and deconstruction.
81
culine and the here and there. So yes, I think we have to
revive the particular out of the new universality. You see?
Because now gender functions as a sort of eat all category.
MR: Tese particularities need to be deployed strategically,
without essentialising them?
CM: Without essentialising them, of course. And here again
we have the question of how? Do we need mediations or
the struggle of the text, of reading and interpreting?
MR: And what model would you suggest? Does it come
from your understanding of Plasticity?
CM: My plasticity in fact is neither one nor the other. It is
just the middle. Tis is exactly where I am: between Hegel,
who is so important and still important for me, and de-
construction. So, Im in the middle. We were talking about
boundaries and Im in the middle. I think the two have
to come to some sort of synthesis which at the same time
transgresses them.
Catherine Malabou is a philosopher and professor at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston
University.
Mark Rainey is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths and the School of Geography, Queen Mary.
His research explores the notions of justice, law and space in relation to refused asylum seekers in Manchester, UK. He is also
a founding member of the Urbis Research Forum seminar series.
Liverpool-based artist Emily Speed works with performance, installation, drawing and sculpture to explore the relationship
between architecture and the body. Panoply (2012) was commissioned by the Bluecoat Gallery as part of the touring exhibition
Topophobia curated by Polly Gould and Anne Eggebert. Photography by Mark Reeves.
82
Transmasculinities
by FINN JACKSON BALLARD
wirh additional image by LIZ ROSENFELD
Te decision to start taking photographs of the trans-
men around me was both a very simple and a very personal
one. Ive been interested in photography for as long as I
can remember, but I took mostly either landscapes or ex-
perimental, lomographic shots until moving to Berlin a few
years ago. During my frst winter here I was pretty broke and
decided that presents for my new friends that year would
be their photo portraits. Being rather shy (at least at that
moment) and far from the most technologically-capable
photographer (still) using one of the earliest-model DSLR
cameras, I was worried that the camera would operate as a
barrier between me and my subject and that I would lack
the capacity to direct a photo shoot. Instead, to my surprise,
I soon found that the easiest way for me to handle portrai-
ture was simply to set up the camera, listen to the subject on
the other side expound on whatever topic they wanted, and
photograph along the way. It became a confessional and of-
ten considerably emotional experience during which I think
I got to know the people I photographed in a profound way.
My favourite results from the experiment are those which
With Bonaparte in the park, 2009
83
With Bonaparte in the park, 2009 Tavi
84
Jayrome and Tom boxing Skyler in school
85
capture my friends at their most relaxed and calm; either
forgetting the camera, or allowing the liminal space it af-
forded them to show something more intimate than is nor-
mally accessible behind the everyday patina.
Next, I began to photograph myself a lot, in fact! Not
out of vanity (really) but simply because I wanted to prac-
tice portraiture, and I was a subject who was always present.
Plus, at the time I started to take self-portraits, around the
same time that I moved to Berlin in 2008, I was experienc-
ing the excitement of an increased physical connection to
myself every time I looked into a mirror or the lens of a
camera. I was already a few years into testosterone therapy,
and was hoping to achieve my chest reconstruction surgery
in the near future. Tis, coupled with the excitement of
moving to a new city that had not only a fascinating history
but also a dynamic queer scene, was just euphoric. I started
to explore the city late at night, on my bike or accompa-
nied by my dogs, and to photograph myself during these
adventures (With Bonaparte in the park, 2009). In the frst
shots, I always kept my back to the camera, which I suppose
was just an element of the mystical or fairy-tale-ish style I
was trying to evoke, but as the series progressed and I got
to know both my new adoptive home and myself increas-
ingly well, the pictures also became more revelatory. When
I fnally got a date in 2010 for my chest reconstruction sur-
gery (by which I mean a mastectomy which also involved,
for me, the replacement of nipples and the intimation of a
male-contoured chest) I was ecstatic. Before I would go for
surgery, I planned to complete a series of portraits of trans-
men for a calendar to mark the year 2011 (the accompany-
ing images are mainly, but not only, from this project).
Te calendar project quickly became more diverse than
I had frst expected, in terms of gender identity. My initial
idea was to shoot a series of twelve portraits referencing and
queering traditional masculine pin-up imagery. As more
people expressed interest in the project and an administra
Jayrome and Tom boxing
86
Tarek at the zoo
87
Homo_ludenz LCavaliero
88
-tive team formed, we ended up with a calendar featuring
thirty-fve subjects who did not exclusively identify as trans-
sexual men, but also as transgendered, genderqueer, drag
king, or simply trans*, the asterisk referring to an endless
range of gender identities. Te subjects mostly came up
with their own ideas for the shoots and about whether they
wanted a theme, costume and so on; some simply wanted
to be photographed in their own homes

(Tavi) and others
wanted a more elaborate set-up. We used sex clubs (Sky-
ler in school), boxing rings (Jayrome and Tom boxing),
abandoned train stations and my favourite and the most
fun shoot purely for the curious looks it granted us the
Berlin Zoo (Tarek at the zoo). Some of the shots did end
up being seemingly-traditional images of masculinity, bar
their queering through the transgenderism of their sub-
jects (Homo_ludenz) and, by the way, I dont think that
transgenderism in its own right necessarily is, in every case,
disruptive to gender hegemony. But I think we still man-
aged to queer these images if in no other way, then purely
through the playfulness of the shoots and their results. An-
other one of my favourites from this project is the portrait of
LCavaliero (LCavaliero), whom I wanted to capture in an
image both so classically feminine, and also so campy, as to
be as purely genderqueer as they are.
While photographing the calendar subjects, I was also
preparing for my long-awaited chest surgery. In fact, I lef
Berlin the very morning afer the calendar launch party, and
was in hospital by that evening, pre-surgical lines drawn
upon my shaven chest by the doctor who would perform
the operation. I had been occupied with the project, of
course, but had also documented something of the simulta-
neous excitement, anxiety and tinge of melancholy that the
upcoming event inspired in me (8 weeks before chest sur-
gery, August 2010). Upon the sudden cessation of all that
energy involved in the calendar preparation, I felt a curi-
ous calm which certainly helped me to deal with the nerves
of surgery, going under anaesthetic for the frst time, and
making an irreversible decision although I had no qualms
about my decision to have the operation. My partner, Liz,
accompanied me to hospital, and during the night before
my surgery photographed me preparing for the next morn-
ing (Finn the night before surgery by Liz Rosenfeld). I am
very glad that she took this series of pictures and that we
have them now for posterity, and I think that they capture
the mood of that moment perfectly. Liz photographed my
refection, which I think was not only a documentary meth-
od but also a way for us to abstract the situation through a
further layer of distance. Tis was the frst time that Liz had
seen my chest beref of layers of clothing or of surgical vests
binders which fatten the chest and I suppose that I was
not ready then to face her or the camera. We also ended up
inadvertently referencing one of our mutual favourite art-
ists, Nan Goldin, who ofen photographed her subjects in
mirrors, although I dont think she usually appeared in the
resultant images. I took more photos than ever before in my
post-surgical delirium and delight

(One week afer chest
surgery, October 2010) and indeed I was delighted when
one of those ended up in an article featuring contemporary
photographers with the title Children of Nan Goldin.
1
It
seemed that I had come a long way: being open about my
own transgenderism, achieving the surgery I had wanted
for many years, and then being able to stand on the fringes
of the world occupied by the (queer) artists whom I most
admired.
Although the worlds awareness of transmen is increas-
ing constantly, with the fame of Buck Angel, Chaz Bono,
Balian Buschbaum and others, I suppose that many of us
still have a drive simply to be represented and to increase
visibility of all the multifarious ways that we confgure (and
ofen reconfgure) our gender identity. Tats also why my
favourite self-portrait is the one of me doing up a tie and
wearing pink lacy underwear at the same time (Getting
89
8 weeks before chest surgery, August 2010
90
Finn the night before surgery by Liz Rosenfeld
91
Finn the night before surgery by Liz Rosenfeld
Dressed). I guess its a rather standard image of gender am-
biguity, or simply of cross-dressing, but I think that the fact
that I am trans does imbue it with something of an extra
dimension. I also think that it is important, although not
essential, that the photographer of individuals such as those
who participated in the calendar project is also trans or at
least sufciently cognitive of queer identity to feel aligned
with their subjects. Ofen, the identity of trans people be-
comes the purview of others. I dont mean only in terms of
visual representation, which ofen relies on the discourse of
fetish as in earlier manifestations of trans pornography (a
genre in which genderqueer, queer and trans directors and
producers are now increasingly establishing themselves,
representing their own community) or that of a strange
and even supposedly-threatening ambiguity (images over
which the readers of gossip magazines are invited to pore,
trying to discern the gender identity of their subjects). I
mean also in terms of discourse. Trans peoples autonomy
over their bodies is ofen compromised by their promotion
as some sort of curiosity to whom it is deemed acceptable to
pose intimate questions without asking for permission, and
thereby to determine their identity even in contrast to their
own wishes.
I think here of trans*people, myself included, who have
been told that they are not really or sufciently trans be-
cause they do not desire to have certain surgeries, identify
themselves in accordance with certain preconceived gender
norms, etc. I was also advised by my doctor, several years
ago now, that I should simply take testosterone for as long as
was necessary to pass unquestioningly as male (preferably
whilst becoming a temporary recluse) and then to re-emerge
as a new self, not mentioning my past, once this process was
over. Tis phenomenon is ofen referred to as going stealth
and in some cases it is simply a survival mechanism. But I
didnt want to avoid having to explain to the world my iden-
tity. I wanted to make myself visible within that world as a
92
One week after chest surgery, October 2010
93
Finn Jackson Ballard comes from Bangor, North-
ern Ireland. He wrote his doctoral thesis at Warwick
University on horror movies and folklore, so the obvi-
ous choice was to move to Berlin and become a his-
torian. Now he guides walking tours specialising in
queer history, and indulges his passions for research,
writing, and visual arts. He began to create self-por-
traits as a way to track his gender transition, and now
continues to photograph and document the Berlin
queer community of which he is delighted to be a part.
Liz Rosenfeld is a Berlin based artist working
with genres of flm and performance who has made
a deliciously painful and lifelong commitment to un-
derstanding queers. She is part of the Berlin flm col-
lective nowMomomentnow and performance group
Foodgasm. Her work has exhibited across venues such
as Te Tate Modern, Te Victoria Albert Museum,
Te Hayward Gallery, Te British Film Institute, Te
Hebbel am Ufer Teater, Te Hammer Museum and
Te Kitchen.
Getting Dressed
transman. To be not only in front of but also behind
the lens will perhaps be our best chance of decon-
structing these notions and showing ourselves to the
world exactly as we are.
NOTES
1. Martin Reichert Nan Goldins Kinder in Die Tageszeitung.
December 4, 2010.
94
Another place in another suburb skirting another city...
A girl, K, watches a plum rot. It rots well. She has been
waiting for this one to turn. She bought it a week or so ago
and put it in a bowl with some others, willing them along.
She doesnt understand the logic of decomposition, it is
composition she cares about. Drawing rotting or rotten fruit
is to her preferable to drawing ripe still lives. She likes the
point at which they start turning going from one state to
another (the other?). When the skin starts to separate from
what it holds in, it is time to draw.
She picks the plum out of the bowl and carries it to the
scrap of outside. It leaves drops of semi-rancid juice on the
foorboards of the second hand bookshop she works in. No
one ever goes there anymore. Te owner lives in Paris on a
dead Lef Bank dream and his parents fortune. He writes
occasionally published poems, some of which are actually
occasionally publishable. K observes the feeling of juice roll-
ing out from between her fngers. Splash a tiny circle on
the ground. Setting it down, she begins.
Before this, she temped in an ofce. She was so anxious
the entire week of anyones birthday because she knows
thered be a card to sign and on account of the layout of the
ofce and her being the most temporary worker, the card
always got to her last or sometimes second to last. It wasnt
just the obvious hierarchy implied in the cards progress
around the ofce that made her anxious, it was the fact that
by the time it got to her every birthday greeting from mean-
ingful to semi-meaningful to trite had been used up, so all
she was lef with was a tiny corner in which to write happy
birthday and an exclamation mark and scrawl her name, at-
tempting to mask it into anonymity. She lef before her three
month contract was up and now works alone for just above
minimum wage, fve days a week. Despite hating having to
work at all, this is a good environment for her. No people to
have to talk to, no-one to tut and silently will her to clean up
afer herself, no noise or gossip, no birthday cards.
It is enough for her to hear the ongoing motions of daily
life through the wall shared with a cofee shop. Plus it is, at
least for now, a real enough cofee shop so when she goes
in she doesnt have to hate herself or anyone and there are
no CDs by once revolutionary folk singers for sale in card-
board display cases by the till. Hearing the sound of the bell
next door chime with varying frequency depending on the
time of day reminded her of falling asleep as a child with
the TV on and people talking and moving around her. Te
sweet feeling of being alone and yet still home. She knows
the names of the people who work in the cofee place but
doesnt use them.
K Draws a Plum
by MIRA MATTAR
with images by REBECCA FOSTER
95
96
Cofee helps her concentrate. Tat and the lack of a com-
puter means she can, if it isnt raining, sit outside most days
and draw, undistracted, uninterrupted observational pen-
cil drawings mostly, of forms found in the garden-scrap or
decaying fruit shed originally bought to eat. Shes free from
obsessions and needs to check and reference, free from pus-
sy rubbing semi-nude Russian babes who want to be her
friend, free from emails from S (her fatmate) with subject
lines reading thought you might be interested in this job :).
Shes free from constant connection, free from seeing the
faces of dead friends and relatives emerge in sidebars, do
you know X? Tere are plenty of art books she can refer to if
needed, but mostly she doesnt because she is being careful
about what to let in. Recently K fnds her drawings growing
increasingly intricate and taking on an abstract, alien qual-
ity. She doesnt question why.
Te small purple-red plum degrading before her, tran-
sitioning and subtly shifing, demands her attention. Not
only because it holds her interest and allows her to locate
herself in the world, but because it tells her that change is
commonplace, ordinary, necessary and constant. To know
that though it is dying (encroaching mould threatening the
purple) it is also still alive, edible even. Its juice would still
bead down her forearm and drip of her elbow if she bit into
97
it. Its small spherical form sits perfectly in her palm, ft-
ting without complaint, its weight is just enough, its texture
pleasantly abject. So she draws it.
Tere is no future plan for this or any of her other draw-
ings. Tey feel no need to live long and prosper or become
prosperous for themselves or anyone. Tey have no value
and yearn for less. Tey do not need or want to be seen.
To draw a line. To draw a line from me to it, K thinks,
from it to me, between us. Life line. Constant edges trem-
oring under passing lights and shadows. Head line. Pupils
shrinking and expanding with each unknowable atmos-
pheric change. Heart line. Te bliss of all that.
* * *
In the inner city fat K sub-sub lets from a name she has
never met, her fatmate, S, is on the phone to her mother.
Her mother lives within an expensive zone of the city in a
house whose value is largely based upon its ability to chan-
nel countrifed charm (the farmhouse-style kitchen!), while
still being located in the centre of the city. Te mother is re-
lating to S her foolproof recipe for meringues. She is thrilled
to be able to share her secret (this woman has secret recipes
for everything) with her daughter who will ensure its legacy
through the generations. It spreads like blood on the shirt
of a just shot man. Deciding not to tell Ss father about the
asked-for pie-advice is wise, hell only negate it through not
getting its signifcance, then it would dissipate, difuse as
dandelion fuf. Keeping it to herself means Ss mother can
return to it in a pinch, anytime she worries about S her
bank account, her calves, her... prospects.
S believes in birthdays, a work life balance and her fve
a day. She counts them up and everything. Her body has
been tested for all possible loitering infections, diseases and
potential mineral defciencies. She is not defcient in a single
thing. Shes got it all.
Te meringues are for the lemon meringue pie she is
making for the surprise birthday party she is throwing to-
night for K. Cakes are too predictable. Pies are fun. In ac-
cordance with her own private vocabulary, this is a special
birthday, the one which marks Ks ascension into her mid-
twenties. A party was called for. A surprise party. S wants
to be the person to throw this party because K and S will
have been, by this birthday, friends for twenty years and this
means something very specifc to S. In the same way K knew
that Ss symmetrical face means something in the world but
is not sure what, she knows this twenty year relationship
means something but is not quite sure what. K suspects that
S still holds in her mind an ordered list of friends, from who
she loves most to who she loves least. S suspects K thinks of
friends as a consolation prize. Both are saddened by these
suspicions. K has never had a surprise party thrown for her
and S thinks she might like it, the element of surprise may
alleviate any doubt.
Once, when S was a child, standing at the top of a tower
looking down, she was overcome with a wonderful sense of
calm, as though her insides had fnally settled, found their
place and function. Tey ft in her body as she did in the
world. Watching the patterns of people from above, tiny as
ants, hazily swarm and move in groups or as single dots she
was able to track their evolutions and dissolutions into cre-
puscular Escher-esque designs. She related this story in the
school playground once to K, who was so taken with her
vision and strength, that she attached herself immediately.
S is ever expanding widening, adding, multiplying
herself, creating new selves for new purposes, for new
modes of engagement. She can adapt and copy herself,
tweak, master the new. She is able to step back and accept
more and somehow not lose anything in the move. She is
quite sure about life. She has her own systems and a strong,
diverse internet presence. She has been publicly document-
ing her selected selves for such a long time that she has,
98
from the outside at least, meshed into coherence a wax
seal, a signature. (But she knows its strengths and weak-
nesses.) People call her a people person and people per-
son people can make things happen facilitate, host. And
a good host throws a good party. Its important, S thinks,
for anything to be able to happen at a party, within reason
of course, she adds.
S prepares the fat, tidies, distributes ashtrays, text-re-
minds the guests. S prepares herself, exfoliates, plucks her
eyebrows, shaves her legs, scrubs the dead skin of her heels,
combs her hair, fles her nails, paints her nails, applies layers
of makeup, rubs her body with slightly iridescent moistur-
ising cream, accessorises, highlights. Behind her eyes fash
magazine images of new kitchen units, vintage tiles and un-
threatening taxidermy. When she couldnt sleep shed plan
her perfect home, designing every detail of every object.
When she could, shed dream of being inside an egg or swim-
ming in a good bit of sea, warm hollows, cool clear water.
S has been preparing all day, and planning for longer. She
is excited and cant wait to see K, still her favourite person.
* * *
K stops in a park on her way home from work. She
watches the long shadow of a brown butterfy on the grass
creaking its wings. Te shadows border keeps shifing on ac-
count of the subtle sway of the grass holding it. It is made of
two motions: the butterfys and the grass. Its ephemerality
stops her from sketching it; that and she is busy laying out a
picnic for herself in a small homage to Denton Welch whose
In Youth is Pleasure she is just about to start a birthday pre-
sent to herself. She eats cheese and bread, she reads, thats all.
When the sky turns and its too dark to read, K bikes
home. S had told her she would be out and they would cel-
ebrate at the weekend so K is looking forward to having the
fat to herself. She is lost in the pink sky caught in squares
through tower block windows, she is keen to maintain her
quiet reverie.
Perhaps objectively her building is not beautiful, but K
likes it: people leaning over brick balconies smoking idly,
ambitious geraniums precluding brick with their crimsons
and corals, sometimes she even secretly enjoys the smell of
urine in the lif. Before she goes in she watches for a mo-
ment a tribe of ants carrying leaves of what should be pro-
portionally unfeasible weights. Occasionally she wonders if
she envies them, their roles and relations are so clear and
simple, ritualised and efcient, but she doesnt know how to
fnd out, its not the sort of thing you can ask. Still, knowing
there are life forms far, far, far smaller than even ants made
her feel like maybe she stood a chance or something.
She is thoroughly surprised when she opens the door.
People leap and yell and smile and K is only still and terrible.
My bodys flling this room like a bad smell, she thinks.
So much of it. Everybodys looking at it, waiting for it to
react, willing it to visibility. Some faces I know, some I dont.
Teir expressions are paused, eyebrows struggling to stay
raised, smiles faltering just slightly. I am molten and spread-
ing. I am obvious as an adopted child, lacking the manner-
isms of the rest of the family. Stillness, drinks levelling in
glasses afer the initial surge. People willing themselves not
to start looking askance at each other.
Eventually K reacts, dispels the smell, opens a window.
Tere is only one reaction. Anything apart from it would be
savage, inarticulate. She regurgitates, only slightly of cue. Her
body approximates girl-form, her voice gone but speaking.
Palpable relief. Dancing commences, sweating continues,
stalled conversations restart. People nestle back into their
seats, into wherever they were, into each other. Te room
swells and lives again. Nicknames are bandied, private jokes,
each with their private history, come public. Banter replaces
conversation, a ball thrown back and forth, to drop it would
be suicide. S says mingle! to K, a word thats never sat well
99
with her germs mixing with other germs combining to
make supergerms. Breaking in from the outside instead of
breaking out from inside. Why must she talk at all? People are
needy and insistent as mosquitoes. Bloodthirsty too. A duty
to be coherent, to make sense, to express inevitable secrets
and shames, to be intelligible, to be at all. Where she is there
is nothing, no insides, no chatter. Sof as snow. Quiet like afer
a disaster. A dream to live without even the embellishment of
a body, to know the territory and relate to it. Nothing more.
In the moment before she reacted she hated S. K knew S
would have spoken to her mother and asked for special peo-
ple to invite. She knew her mother would have loved S for
it and willingly emailed a list of names and numbers with a
desperate little note at the end emphasising the importance
of inviting men, nice men. S would have pretended the hint
was subtle and emailed something funny and tasteful back.
Ks mother would have closed the laptop and sipped her
cofee and had precisely one moments peace before allow-
ing the next thing to worry her. S would feel, through some
cosmic force of femaleness, Ks mothers pain at having so
barren seeming a daughter.
Tripping, tumbling, hugging, always someone crying,
kissing, gossiping, dancing, bottles, ashtrays, rolling laugh-
ter, music, abandon. Someone asks K whose party this is.
Faces fip from young to old, she imagines these people age-
ing no she sees them ageing before her eyes, certain lights,
certain expressions, the beginning fecks of grey, widows
peak, crows feet. All these landscapes. A girl bent back-
wards in a dance. Lines white and straight as the centre of a
road. Smoke. Suddenly the sofa has room for six, everything
is possible. Vertiginous stacks of records, precariously bal-
anced cans, cups, glasses, surfaces rising to catch inch long
bodies of ash. Slips and slides and smiles, what is meant and
unmeant. Teir acrobatics are admirable. S is a fantastic
drunk practically Roman with it. She watches and merges,
somehow through merging she sees.
100
K feels stupid and maybe she is, maybe she has become
stupid, stupefed. Fingers fnd no pulse. Inside a shell, un-
der the sea. Pain and love and pleasure throb and retreat,
always throb and retreat. Arhythmic fows. Too much
outside, clamouring, demanding, fascinating, repulsive.
Infnitely multiplying contemporaries. Seeds sprout, hairs
grow.
S catches her eye from across the room. K smiles. Its
obvious for a brief moment what is happening and K
is ashamed. When they were teenagers riding the bus to
school together K would watch Ss eyeballs ficker as she
looked out the window. She knew her own eyes were al-
most certainly doing the same thing and that it was natural
and refexive but still, it made her want to comfort S some-
how. At those moments she felt most separate from her.
And now, sometimes Ss energy made K nervous, uncom-
fortable. S would bustle about the house, constantly mov-
ing, cleaning, replying to emails, cooking, working, never
seeming relaxed or content. To S contentedness was synon-
ymous with apathy. She crackled in a way that set Ks teeth
on edge, like she ought to brace herself for something. K
senses S trying to get close. Seeds sprout, hairs grow, things
always push themselves out.
* * *
101
Retreat.
Ks room. She stripped it herself. Nothing now but bed,
desk, chair, drawers. But what, she wonders, does my liver
taste like? Her brain a fat maze full of jingles. To be deliv-
ered from waste. Te pleasure of the crowd next door ac-
cumulates like pressure compacting her brain into fossilised
lumps revealing no ancient secret this thing could never
fy, we were right, pack it back into the earth. Airless spaces.
But what, she wonders, are my insides brewing?
Trough the rectangular window across the rectangular
courtyard, over the painted rectangles and curved lines of
the basketball courts, she looks in through the windows of
her neighbours which checkerboard across the face of the
rectangular building comprising the opposite block. Some
lights are on, some of, disrupting the regularity, some win-
dows are open, some closed, breaking the image of solidity.
Sometimes she can see straight through their fats, the win-
dows align depending on her position and she sees through
to another sky, another world on the other side. She sees
them, their screens, their computers.
Life insurance advert starring a once famous and rela-
tively subversive male comedian. He plays the ghost of a
dead white suburban father helping his family pack for their
holidays. He says things like dont forget your goggles Jack.
Te punchline is you only realise hes dead at the end when
the homely teenage daughter says it wont be the same with-
out dad to the mother who has never once hated her chil-
dren or doubted her life.
Woman at a computer, only eyes and forehead visible,
furrowing and relaxing between problem and solution.
Teenage girl dancing maniacally in her room, a window
open fltering Oh Bondage Up Yours mixed with Britneys
Piece of Me.
One person at a computer, another leaning over to see
whatever it is making the frst person laugh so hard.
Hands open to show honesty, eyes wide, imploring us to
save something.
Animated blue capsules foating above the mouth and
crotch of racially non-specifc animated woman curved
shoulders, round hips a promise of relief.
Pulling open a drawer a womans hair tumbles over the
side of her face, obscuring all but the tip of her nose.
Heterosexual white teenagers at a house party enter an
empty bedroom and start making out on the bed. Te boy
forces his hand down the front of the girls jeans, she tries
to stop him but is overpowered. From behind a glass screen
another version of the same boy bangs on the glass with his
fsts screaming dont do it.
A beautifully laid table. Across it one man cups the
cheek of another, they kiss.
Te obese opposite neighbour in pink string vest
sitting outside her front door smoking cigarette afer
cigarette.
A group of young men playing a trick on one of their
friends, another young man who looks exactly like them.
Pink geraniums.
Te refection of a well in the teardrop rolling down the
cheek of a starving African infant. Yogurt in tubes.
Stretching to draw a curtain.
Animated neon monsters colonising a toilet seat.
A man on the telephone beckoning his wife over to hear
the good news about their debt consolidation, she in an ec-
static fervour.
Lettuce bouncing through air.
K is connected to everything, without metaphor. To im-
agine a line into the air and it be fre.
Te dancing teenage girl sees her, they lock eyes, she
laughs and waves, K returns both. She continues dancing. K
smiles, looks away. Her room again. Stripped. S said, this is
a sign of moral madness. S said, compose yourself.
102
One picture lef hanging on the wall among the oily blue
tac marks and pin holes (a pockmarked face). It is of her
own refection taken in the mirror of a steam flled bath-
room. For reasons she will never know, some ghost inside
the machine, the photo looks nothing like her, it does not
even look human. Te almost-face appears in the right hand
side of the photograph but it is greenish. Where the eyes
should be are neon yellow slits. Everything else is black.
Te wall breathes at her. A vulgar open pore. Te win-
dows see. To be sealed is to be beautiful. Beyond this room,
taste and touch. Sweat on a lovers lips. But what then of
that occasional forescence that blurs the edges of her skin?
Evidence of absorption and emittance. Detection of a song
from next door a beacon, a call, a beam.
Inside the song a voice that is more than a voice, and
inside the voice a world that is more than a world. Te world
swallows the voice, the voice removes the world, the voice
becomes the world. Te singer has connected her spine to
her lungs to her brain to her throat to her cunt, bending
them beyond their elastic limits into a new plasticity. All
moving in one ecstatic yes.
Ks nerves rise to the surface of her skin a semblance
of heat.
Te voice sings her insides out and draws the outside in,
it cannot resist her nor she it. Tey entwine until there is
no diference, until she is so much with it and it is so much
with her that (at least for the duration of the song but always
in a way) it becomes hard to tell them apart. Although this
kind of union always necessitates a departure, a break that
has to happen to avoid total subsumption, a trace will carry
through, the trace will become a scar, the scar will build to-
ward new fesh. A ring inside a tree, a star.
Te plum disconnected its skin from its fesh, its fesh
from its stone. And yet. Composure. Dissipation.
K gently tears the drawing of the plum out of her sketch-
book. She sticks it to the wall. She knows exactly why.
Mira Mattar is a writer, contributing editor at Mute and 3:AM, and one third of Monster Emporium Press. She lives in
South London and blogs at http://hermouth.blogspot.com/
Rebecca Foster is an artist living and working in London. Her current practice explores the political representation of the
female body and the desire for that which is lost.
103
Beauty
Marked
I like to celebrate artifce and showmanship
with humour and sensuality. My subjects
range from everyday women to the most
famboyant of burlesque characters, and in
every instance I hope to capture a sense of
their individual glamour and beauty.
Portfolio at:
www.gemmaparker.co.uk
by GEMMA PARKER
Acrylic on canvas.
104
Lightning
Flowers
by GIULIA MORUCCHIO
& MARTA MUSCHIETTI
Skin, as an opaque surface, ofers discretion and protec-
tion to our inner body. Technology allows us to see through
it and visually reach the secrets it hides, but we just have a
vague idea of the physiological world each one of us con-
tains. Sometimes, nature gives us the opportunity to cross
the surface of the skin and lets those secrets emerge: Li-
chtenberg fgures, also called lightning fowers or skin
feathering, form beneath the skin of humans unfortunate
to be struck by lightning. Although the exact causes are sub-
ject to some debate, they appear to be the result of physical
damage to capillaries under the skin, perhaps caused by the
fow of electrical current, or by shock wave bruising from
external fashovers just above the skin. Tese reddish marks
fade away over a period of hours or days.
105
Pcn, pcncil, graphic dcsign,
rcd thrcad.
106
Giulia collaborates with the artistic association Microclima (www.microclima-venezia.com) and has co-organized Helico-
trema Festival of Recorded Audio, while Marta is a freelance graphic designer working mostly in the editorial feld, her works
have been published in magazines like Rivista Studio and Lucha Libre (www.martamuschiata.altervista.org). Tey both live in
Venice, where they study for an MA in Visual Arts at IUAV University.
Pcn, pcncil, graphic dcsign,
rcd and purplc thrcad.
107
A Conversation with
Federico Campagna
Skin has always irritated me. I look at it as a personal afair, as a past memory of teenage let-downs, as tending towards
decay in the future; an impediment, that very border between the self and the outside: in need to be crossed or smashed yet
getting in the way. Rather than taking Wittgensteins word to be silent about matters one cannot speak about, I thought there
might be a way to approach skin obliquely, either through metaphor or as a means for radical politics. So I met up with Federico
Campagna, who recently co-edited What Were Fighting For: A Radical Collective Manifesto (Pluto Press, 2012), to hear if he
had some strategies on how to get to grips with the matter. He had to ofer some ways of running away from skin with Pessoa, of
destroying it with Stirner, of maintaining humorous distance with Kafa, and of using it opportunistically to be invisible from
power, and much more. What follows is the frst half of our conversation, which will be published in full on Nyx, a noctournals
website (nyxnoctournal.org).
by K\!N V. ML!N,
with images by ALICE WHITE
108
KEVIN W. MOLIN: Before starting the conversation on
skin, I wanted to share with you a short poem by Fernando
Pessoa related to the subject. Pessoa wrote this as himself
and called it Im a runaway.
Im a runaway.
When I was born
Tey shut me up
Inside myself.
Ah, but I ran away.

If people get sick

Of living in
Te same old place,
Why not of living
In the same old skin?
My soul is on
the lookout for me,
but I lie low.
Will it ever fnd me?
Never, I hope!

Being myself only

means being pinned down
and no one at all.
Ill live on the run,
and really live!
1
I was thinking about this poem in relation to Pessoas
larger work, which Im aware you feel is related to your own
ethical stance as an egoist anarchist. In this poem Pessoa,
as a poet, is wearing this skin and running away; at difer-
ent times though, he wears diferent skins, through diferent
characters with diferent heteronyms. But in the end he re-
ally has just one skin that he cannot get out of. He can only
run that far. He creates this world with diferent characters
that he can inhabit at diferent times, but he is synthesis-
ing them into this one person: Pessoa himself, who has one
skin. What do you think?
FEDERICO CAMPAGNA: In Pessoa himself, there is al-
ways this discussion about the limits of oneself. For exam-
ple there is this one poem called Tabacaria in which Pessoa
writes as lvaro de Campos, and he says:
I am nothing,
I shall always be nothing,
I cannot wish to be anything.
Aside from that, I have within me all the dreams of the
world.
Here, Pessoa acknowledges the limitations that derive
from the denomination of oneself as one. Levinas calls it
the denomination of the said, and it is a big topic for Pessoa.
Levinas understands the whole of Western philosophy as
an attempt to reduce everything to what he calls the same,
to reduce all singularity and all otherness to the same. He
goes to a further length in saying that with the discourse
of ontology for example, using the category of being as an
overarching category, everything is reduced to sameness of
the being. Traditionally, in the specifcity of the individual
being, he says, this fat egonomy, this economy of the ego,
turns everything to one, to the same.
With Pessoa, I think there is a similar critique. On the
one hand the idea that the very category of individuation
castrates the possibility of becoming other than oneself,
condemning and forcing us to sameness, to always being
the same. And on the other hand, the fact that this kind of
egonomy, this kind of economy of the ego, as it presupposes
and is presupposed by the structures created by Western so-
ciety in general, enforces this discipline to say with a Fou-
109
Hc Vasn't Always Tat Vay" il on lincn
caldian term further in depth. What Pessoa tries to do is, I
think, is to challenge that. First of all, because he works with
an astonishing array of pseudonyms, over eighty diferent
pseudonyms. Four are the main ones, Riccardo Reis, lvaro
de Campos, Alberto Caeiro and Bernardo Soares, but theres
many more. Including Fernando Pessoa as Fernando Pes-
soa, and Fernando Pessoa as somebody else. Pessoas ego is
truly ruptured. In this way you can see the problem of the
skin, as the limiting denomination of oneself as oneself: as
the limitation of being forced to be the same. On the other
hand, I think you can also see it as through the lens of one
of these other characters, Alberto Caeiro. He is the mystical
side of Pessoa, hes a twenty-something year old shepherd
that lives in the countryside outside of Lisbon, and he is able
to look at things and nature beyond the category of denomi-
nation. As he says, nature has no inside. Nature cannot be
described or understood in any other way, it cannot be an-
thropomorphised, you cannot even categorise it in terms of
themes or species or genes. Nature simply is.
Tis is something another poet, Wallace Stevens, talks
about: that is, the mere-ness of being. Tings merely are.
You cannot possibly denominate or categorise them. You
cannot attach a skin to them that then you can recognise. Of
course, this all feeds back to the general discourse on phe-
nomenology, as for example developed by Heidegger him-
self. Tis idea that as the object reveals itself, it disappears
at the same time. It is something that is quite fashionable at
the moment, with all this object-oriented stuf. With Pes-
soa, however, there is more than that. Because there is on
the one hand, in some of his characters, this idea that you
want to run away, like in this poem. So you can escape your
prison of being the same, of being one, by an act of will and
imagination, so you can contain in yourself all the dreams
of the world, and become more than one by becoming four
diferent people, in an exercise of schizophrenia; but at the
same time, there is also the understanding that even this at-
110
"Tc rug (Tony)'" il on Lincn,
tempt to escape is nave because the very problem of same-
ness, the very category of the skin, is already fctitious. So,
you are escaping from an imaginary prison in which you are
not really stuck, because the prison itself does not exist: as
Alberto Caeiro would say, there is no inside, and as there is
no inside there is no outside. Tere are no walls, there is no
prison, there is no skin. Its all an imagination, so there is not
even the need to escape from it. Its only if you believe in it
that you just need to run away. Alberto Caeiro would say:
dont bother, the skin doesnt even exist.
It seems to me that, if you read the same problematic
through Wallace Stevens, this problem of the skin is per-
ceived in a diferent way. He understands that things merely
are, but he also understands that being a person, being a
human, means not only to be able but forced to see the skin.
Although the skin may not exist in itself, we as humans are
forced to see it. Te skin of ourselves, and the skin of the
world. And this category of the skin, the point of contact
with the world, becomes the only point in which anything
can actually be expressed and understood. Tere is one of
his poems, called Te Man with a Blue Guitar:
Te man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. Te day was green.
Tey said, You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.
Te man replied, Tings as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.
And they said then, But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are.
2
111
tive, while Stirner is much more of a heroic type of spirit. He
says: I am nothing, but I am the creative nothing, I am the
nothing out of which everything is created. So he destroys
the skin and, as he destroys the skin, which is between him
and him, he fnds this black hole, in which time and space
dont exist but in which everything is contained. It is con-
tained not in the sense that it is already there, but in the
sense that it is from there that everything appears.
How does it appear? Well it appears a bit like in the
Garden of Eden, especially when Adam goes around and
nominates things: out of his own creative nothing, he cre-
ates the skin that separate objects in the world. Te entire
world is, in itself, things that merely are, but by the act of
denomination that comes out of your creative nothing you
create things. You distinguish the couch from the rug, the
rug from the ceiling and so on, so you create all these things.
It is a completely arbitrary decision. So skin-making is the
act of denomination, which is a possibility, an empowering
possibility because it creates the world in which you live,
but it is also a curse, like what Wallace Stevens would say, it
means that you cannot see anything else but the skin. Te
blue guitar becomes the only way in which you can interact
with anything in the world.
KWM: In relation to Stevens, in a diferent way perhaps, we
could relate Kafas position on this problematic. Kafa does
feel, and I personally identify with this to some extent, skin to
be an impediment. In the world of Kafa, skin is like condem-
nation. Well, someone could alter it, draw on it, make a tattoo,
cut it, do modifcations to it; but ultimately, there are some
coordinates you cannot get out of, you are fxed to your skin
to some extent. You are forced to accept it as it is, like school,
its mandatory. And it afects how to others see you ok, there
may be people with whom you try to go beyond that sort of
limitation but you could also see wider patterns of how oth-
ers judge you by the colour of your skin, and so on.
Tis man with the blue guitar is the poet. In this this dia-
logue between an imaginary audience and the poet, the im-
aginary audience says: you have to tell us the world as it really
is, but also you have to make it so that we can understand it.
KWM: Is this another version of Platos myth of the cave, in
which you only see the illusion, and you have to get outside
of this dark cave and then come back to enlighten others?
FC: Yes, thats what the audience asks for. But Wallace Ste-
vens says, I cant. Because the reality is that the moment I
try to express it, with the blue guitar, which is his tool to
express things, the moment reality touches the skin of the
blue guitar, its not as things as they really are: which is, as
it rhymes in the poem itself. So the act of making poetry, in
a way, the act of expressing things, is the skin: this skin is
inescapable, this skin is not as things as they really are, there
is not this possibility.
Ten there is another possible way of seeing the same
problematic with Stirner, which I think its more interesting.
Stirners focus is not as much on the relationship of the skin
that there is between you and the world outside, but that is
between you and yourself. So in this relationship between
you and yourself you understand that there is a cultural
skin. Cultural skin is that which makes you understand
you as a man, as an Italian or English man, as a citizen, as
whatever you know, as a number of things. Tese catego-
ries, which are of course spooks, create this skin between
you and yourself, if you identify as somebody else. Stirner
challenges that by saying all of this bullshit, I am just myself.
And it is in my own interest that I do things, and at some
point he says: who am I apart from myself? I am nothing.
Tis fact is interesting because, as I wrote in another piece,
thats the exact same thing Pessoa says.
But Stirner pushes that further not in the way Pessoa
does, Pessoa is more of a contemplative or a dreamer-fugi-
112
In Te Penal Colony, there this ofender that gets as his
punishment for all the laws that he broke, he gets this slow,
painful incision of all these laws onto his skin. He then has
to live on with that form of eternal punishment that not only
he himself can avoid seeing, but also everyone else can see
what he is guilty of. Or in Metamorphosis, we have Gregor
Samsa struggling to get of this beetle-like skin, to which he
seems condemned to. Te whole story there is this ridicu-
lous problem of his: more than worry about having become
an insect, it is that he cannot go to work, that he cannot wear
the skin work demands.
Perhaps we can think of Kafa in relation to your own
work, where a sort of anti-work ethic emerges, and how that
fts within my own experience of it or that of many others:
as much as we might despise work, we work a lot and ofen
feel overworked.
FC: I think there is one problem in general with Kafa: its
the way Kafa is usually read. He is always considered a very
very serious and depressing writer, but I think Kafa can be,
and ofen is, a humorous writer. Te comedy aspect of Kafa
is ofen overlooked. Metamorphosis I think can be read as a
humorous book. Its a guy that wakes up as a giant beetle
KWM: It is translated as vermin, its not even a beetle
FC: I think you could see that through a humorous kind
of lens. You wake up one day, you see yourself and you see
that you as such is not really you, its somebody else, its
somebody elses skin, so you are trapped within the strait-
jacket of somebody elses skin. And the moment you realise
that, in a way it is a lesson in humour: because although
the book is humorous, the character lacks the ability to fnd
enough humour to fnd a distance between him and this
skin. As hes unable to create enough of a distance to be
able to accept it in a humorous way, going to work and so
on, and going in the outside world, he becomes completely
paralysed. I think in a way the main lesson of Metamor-
phosis is that you are always trapped in a monstrous form,
which is what other people see of you, how you see yourself
when you objectify yourself. Tis skin, this blue guitar, this
veil of inauthenticity, is there to stay, theres no way of get-
ting rid of it. You can choose to become either completely
paralysed, it is a little bit like a Superego that tells you that
you must turn back into your real self but you cannot pos-
sibly do that. You might as well become totally paralysed by
an injunction you cannot meet. Or, you can create a space
of humour: see yourself as ridiculous, as absurd, and none-
theless say ok, even if Im absurd, Im able to live in the
world. Of course, Im utilising the category of humour as
described by Simon Critchley.
Te interesting thing is that the problem with work
is similar to that. Because in work, you are once again
asked to collapse the distance of humour. You are sup-
posed to have a skin, which is monstrous, which is that
of the worker-vermin, but you are supposed to love it. So
its not a Superego that tells you that you have to go back
to your authenticity, but it is a really weird Superego that
tells you: now you must become really this vermin, you
must feel at home in it, you must completely remove any
distance from its skin. Once again, a way of maintaining
sanity with your work I think is humour. So we have to
go to work, not because its good for us, but simply be-
cause in the current conditions it seems to be the only
way to gain the means for survival. It is absurd but it is
the way it is, defnitely something must change and we
must work for change; but in the meantime, you and I
have to go to work tomorrow. When we are at work, we
are supposed to be wearing the skin of the monster that
we are not. Although the injunction is that of becoming
and believing that you are the monster which usually is
the cause of so-called happiness at work then we must,
113
Stirner says: I am nothing,
but I am the creative noth-
ing, I am the nothing out
of which everything is cre-
ated. So he destroys the skin
and, as he destroys the skin,
which is between him and
him, he fnds this black hole,
in which time and space
dont exist but in which eve-
rything is contained.
So you can escape your
prison of being the same,
of being one, by an act of
will and imagination, so
you can contain in yourself
all the dreams of the world,
and become more than one
by becoming four diferent
people, in an exercise of
schizophrenia.
"Ha 8loody Ha" il on Lincn
114
Te Suggestion (Sabi il n Lincn
in order to maintain our sanity, add a layer of humour.
I mean, looking at ourselves as workers and laughing
at ourselves. Not in a mean way, like hating ourselves
for that thats a possibility, but its not a very good
one but just simply being able to laugh at ourselves,
laugh at ourselves as workers. In that way, I think we
can survive within work: otherwise it becomes an ex-
tremely painful experience.
KWM: I wonder how this position towards work re-
lates to a strategy you wrote about, that of disrespect-
ful opportunism. In an article on it, you wrote: for
work, we should reserve all the lies we have, afer all we
have long understood on our own skin that the worst
possible treatment we might receive is that of being
deceived and exploited. We should unleash the same
treatment to our worst enemies, capitalism and work.
3

Id be interested to know how this may translate into
ways of wearing diferent skins to deceive the enemy; a
question that relates also to speaking to power, when it
makes demands on you.
FC: Well, I see this as a very important and prob-
lematic thing. I think it is very important to have a
strategy of vanishing in relation to power. When I say
power, I mean not just the typical power of the gov-
ernment but also in general all those narratives that
demand your submission, those causes, those spooks
that Stirner says demand your submission. In a cer-
tain way, you have to be able to create a distance be-
tween yourself and power. Tis strategy of vanishing
has to be a strategy of opportunistic conformism, in
that sense.
Let me explain. Te typical emancipatory fair-
ytale is that of the naked emperor, you know, the em-
perors new clothes. Te emperor has this dress that
115
Te best demonstration would be if everyone were to be dressed like a banker or a
policeman. If you really want to create subversion, everybody would be dressed like a
tourist, and then all of a sudden, I dont know, cash machines blow up, and nobody sees
who did it.
doesnt actually exist, because hes just a fool, and then a
kid comes, and while everybody is afraid of saying to the
king that hes naked, this one kid come and says: oh, youre
naked. However, the way it actually works in reality is the
other way round. Its the people who are completely naked
in front of power, and its the emperor that sees that eve-
rybody else is naked: but by telling them that they have
clothes on, that they have some identity of sort, he makes
them think that they are wearing their new clothes. Power
sees you in your nakedness and exploits you in your na-
kedness, convincing you that you have clothes on, that you
are invisible to it in a way, that you are covered by power.
Now, the strategy of vanishing is that of actually putting
on some clothes: actually creating a distance, so that what
power sees of you is not actually your real skin, but it is the
second skin above your natural skin. In that sense, an op-
portunistic conformism can be a very interesting strategy,
in that you manage really to create a further distance, to
put some clothes on, that in a way do not represent you. In
the book that Im about to publish I wrote about this, for
example about strategies of how to do that at work.
I challenge, for example, that specifc anarchism of cer-
tain punks, who would go to work at Starbucks, or wher-
ever, with a green mohican or a tattoo on the forehead
saying anarchy and fuck it all. In a way they want to chal-
lenge their own clothes by wearing their own nakedness
even more. As if the problem was that they had clothes on,
which they dont have! I think that this is a self-defeating
strategy, because if you are even more naked in front of
power, power will be able to fnd you out even more, and to
attack you even more. What you have to do is to disguise
yourself. Te point is not of doing a bank robbery without
a balaclava on, being completely visible; the point is to do a
bank robbery and not be found out. Te point of illegalism,
for example, is that of committing the perfect crime. Te
perfect crime is the crime in which you are never discov-
ered as the criminal. Like Sun Tzu would say in Te Art of
War, the best general is not the one that fghts a hundred
battles and wins, but its the one who doesnt fght a hundred
battles and wins. Te whole point its not even engaging in
it. If you really want to steal, if you really want to sabotage
things, if you really want to appropriate for your own ad-
vantage from capital, you have to do it by being completely
invisible. Power must not fnd you out, must not see you as
a rebel. Te moment you show yourself in the nakedness of
your rebellion, youre fucked. Te whole thing of the Black
Bloc is absurd in this sense: you cover up yourself in a way
to be even more visible. Te best demonstration would be
if everyone were to be dressed like a banker or a policeman.
If you really want to create subversion, everybody would
be dressed like a tourist, and then all of a sudden, I dont
know, cash machines blow up, and nobody sees who did it.
If you really want to do this stuf, you have to do it at the
dead of night, not in the light of day. Tat is the mistake of
believing that it is the emperor that is naked while you are
fully clothed. It is the other way round.
116
Federico Campagna is a writer currently living in London. His main felds of research are
anarchism and ethics. His forthcoming titles are Te Last Night: anti-work, atheism, adven-
ture (Zero Books, 2013) and Canone Bifdo (il Saggiatore, Italy, 2013). Federico Campagna
edits and ofen publishes on the multilingual, transeuropean platform Trough Europe
(http://th-rough.eu).
Kevin W. Molin is a writer and translator, currently researching for a PhD at the Centre for
Cultural Studies in Goldsmiths, University of London. His work is motivated by the will to under-
mine pedagogical metanarratives of inequality of intelligences. He recently published a cut-up
novel with artist Zoe Olaru, Ferals: or the schooling of Skinner, in the collection Tis is not a
school book (Five Years, 2012).
Alice Whites portraiture depicts local characters sourced from the streets, doorways and
domiciles of South-East London. Te relationship between subject and surroundings, character
and characterisation, facia and faade, are the core concepts which forms a basis for this art-
work.Web: www.alicewhiteart.com / Twitter: @alicewhiteart / Email: alicewhiteart@gmail.com
NOTES
1. Fernando Pessoa, Poems,trans. and ed. Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown, San Francisco: City Light Books,
1998, p.178.
2. Wallace Stevens, Poems, selected by John Burnside, London: Faber, 2008, p.28
3. Federico Campagna, Squandering: the case for disrespectful opportunism, Trough Europe, 21
st
March 2012.
Accessed at: http://th-rough.eu/writers/campagna-eng/squandering-case-disrespectful-opportunism.
117
jos dc ro" il, Gold Lcal, Raw Pigmcnt on Lincn
118
Te duration of the workshop is interminable (longer
sessions will not allow a fuller schedule) and the level inde-
terminate for an absolute maximum of no one.
Arguably the premium material for inscription,
skins nature is inherently diferent to that of other sup-
ports. It necessitates treatments in both preparation and
presentation.
Te workshop will comprise various methods of mak-
ing ready, including fattening and nap raising, occasion-
ing corrections and erasures, stretching to remove cockling,
and drumming over a prepared surface. Other techniques
such as layering translucent and sometimes sallow skin over
drawing will be encouraged, and Ren will begrudgingly
demonstrate several unique and idiosyncratic approaches
to working with [your] skin.
Please note that this workshop inevitably raises dust
while sandpapering the membranes, and is therefore wholly
suitable for those who are fatally sensitive to airborne dust.
Skin is a translucent material. When fayed and peeled
from the body the bloodied rags can be washed with water
and lime or honey, liver and almonds, but never together.
It should be soaked in India ink to remove the hair. Once
clear [of hair], the two sides are distinct. Te hair follicles
are usually visible on the outer surface alongside any scar-
ring or other marks. Te membrane can also display the
lines of a vein network, the veined watermark of the sheet
and the trace of the dandy roll. Ren in advance of the
workshop has laboriously removed some of the remaining
hair by careful scudding, however you will still fnd vari-
ous skins attached to herses on which to practice. You will
be invited to add pippins and to take a lunellum to clean
of any further hairs, and to pounce in order to ensure that
your mark making materials adhere to the skins surface.
Please note that all participants are required to bring a
prepared drawing, size including margins; imprecisely in-
calculable, ready to be written onto their skin (ideally with
bleeding hands) during the session and prepared at home
in advance by every attendee. Te drawing shall be dumb,
and can be portrait or landscape and may include a few
lines of text or a short quotation. You should display little
consideration of composition, colour or author accredita-
tion in order to present the innumerable problems of the
day. In addition you will require:
Dip-pens, the head of a small fsh, impotent pencils, two
small poems and the skeleton of a preserved monkey
Medium and fne grades of sandpaper or wet or dry
abrasive papers
Finely powdered pumice and marble dust
Working on Skin
by PHIL SAWDON
An invitation to an embodied workshop by means of Ren Hector
119
A large urn of rare baked clay
Handsome stiletto scalpel with a curved blade
Straight edge tattoo incorporating Te Day of Reckoning
Slippery paper and brown paper bags
Two pressing boards, a piece of exterior grade plywood
(for drumming) and a large root
Bibulous paper, plastic sheeting, rabbit-skin glue and
well-worn shoes
An atomiser, shewing a squinting eye
A strange stick to whittle
* Te instructor can provide some fne fresh skin if re-
quested in advance. Each student will need at least half of
their skin for a two day class or their full skin for a four
day class. Any additional skin will need to be ordered and
mailed in advance of the workshop.
** Other requirements to be provided by the organisers:
A large mortar & pestle to facilitate the grinding of vari-
ous powders and a staple gun with an old wooden board
Book now
Phil Sawdon is an artist, writer and sometime academic.
He is an Honorary Fellow of Loughborough University School
of the Arts. He is a co-editor of the Literature/Creative Text
section of the online magazine Stimulus Respond and a di-
rector of the drawing and visualisation project TRACEY.
He publishes in various formats including fctions, artworks,
academic texts, soundworks and moving image. His most re-
cent drawing fctions have been for Danse Macabre, Stimulus
Respond, Nyx, a noctournal and textsound. He also works
with Deborah Harty as the creative drawing collaboration
humhyphenhum.
Someones Always
Missing Somewhere
by INGE HOONTE
When you were 10 or 11, your father lef you a
map.
121
Tey brought him home early that morning and
tucked him in on the day bed in the corner of the
living room so hed be in close proximity to both
the bathroom and his favourite TV programmes.
While he was napping, your mother went to get
some groceries, leaving you on the small wooden
chair next to his bed. It sighed under your weight
as you positioned yourself in such a way that you
could keep one eye on his chest and the other on
his eyelids in case he would open them.
Fixated on counting each breath, you realized you
had lost track somewhere afer 258, when a sof
crackling sound coming from his throat slowly
pulled your blurry gaze into focus. In your hand
was a neatly folded map with rough edges. His
chest was empty.
From the visitors chair next to his bed in the hos-
pital youd been staring at a slowly growing bulge
on his chest for months now, convinced the shape
was somehow part of his body. In the beginning, it
formed a loose outline behind the yellow stained
cotton of his t-shirt and you didnt pay much at-
tention to it, but as time progressed it seemed to
pulsate unevenly from underneath his knitted
blue overcoat.
122
You carefully select as well as randomly bump
into us. You collect, assemble, count and mark
us on your map. A map that expands and re-
tracts, gains terrain and cuts of corners, erases
sour taste, and solidifes outstanding smells and
clever remarks, over time.
Its outline is carved in your chest, like your fa-
thers and his fathers before you. While it enlarg-
es valves, swells tracts, and pushes yellow fuids
through open pores, cream-coloured bridges re-
connect, chapped skin and mufe the bleeding
thats kept frmly underneath the gauze.
For years, you safekeep the map in the kitchen
drawer, underneath napkins and measuring
cups, behing the straws with their thin paper
wrappings.
Te one who perfectly arched her back, grab-
bing a hold of the sheets, her face somewhere
between pleasure and pain.
Te one who fell in love with another man.
Te one who got it by a truck and died in the
hospital, only days afer you decided to move in
Te one you biked through England with, and
introduced to another ones old friends.
Te one you had sex with on a roofop in
Brooklyn.
Te one with vibrant red curls.
123
Te one you called Hot Stuf.
Te one you called Monkey.
Te one you called Toots.
Te one you called Killjoy (a long, long time ago).
Te one you took to the house by the lake.
Te one you were supposed to marry.
Te one who was your friend, your lover, then a
stranger (there are several ones like this, some of
whom developed in a diferent order).
Te surface in between the marks rotates, stretch-
es and dissolves underneath your feet. Unlike our
hands and nails and lips and teeth that clutch on
to you no matter what to keep you close, to not let
you slip away - your feet have nothing to hold on
to. No sole, no bearing, no threading, no straps.
Te paths are laid out, with directions in foreign
languages, hastily written notations of half fn-
ished thoughts. Foliage and shrubbery surround-
ed by cut of knee grass, hiding backpacks flled
with notebooks and energy bars. Footsteps in the
mud, too big for your feet, too small to nestle in.
Te vessel awaiting you near the water is made of
the wrong wood, the kind that itches your calves
when you shrug against it.
124
Inge Hoonte is a writer, performance, video and sound artist with an interest in how notions of privacy, identity, and be-
havioural routines shape the tension between reaching out and keeping ones distance in interpersonal communication and
physicality. Her writing has been published by Armchair/Shotgun, Requited Journal, Curbside Quotidian, Polvo Magazine, and
Snif, Scrape, Crawl. Inge received her MA Networked Media from the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, and her MFA from the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
You snap the lines, you square the circle. You
rise, you fall and rinse away. To move on, to be
unattached, means you are getting closer...
125
Skin before Organs
When thinking about psychoanalysis and its treatment
of the body, few theoretical approaches come to mind that
explicitly deal with the body of the analysand. However,
thinking about what the psyche actually is, we fnd our-
selves in a rather unstable area, one that cannot be simply
defned as physical or non-physical.
Te French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu insistently
aims to consider just this liminality of the psyche that is
both physical and mental. Tus adding to a general charac-
terisation of psychoanalysis as not only a science of the limi-
nal but a discipline which is itself liminal, situated between
culture and nature, between science and belief . Based on
studies conducted in the 1970s Anzieu proposes his theo-
retical concept of the Skin Ego in his book of the same name
in 1985. In Te Skin Ego Anzieu presents a creative concept
which modifes the way the way we look at the ego as well
as the skin. Te Skin Ego is without doubt a metaphorical
concept based on early infant physical experience, yet which
takes into account an organ so versatile in its properties that
it may give ground to various interpretations.
When considering the liminal quality of the concept,
Anzieus notion of the common skin seems to be especially
appealing as it shows a new way in which we can under-
stand the earliest experiences of the infant and their conse-
quences for adult life. What Anzieu has to say about the way
the skin of the infant interacts with that of the mother turns
out to be of decisive signifcance for the description of what
happens when two people are in love.
Following Anzieus idea of this imagined shared skin
between infant and mother, I will discuss its consequences
for the experience of the pre-symbolic chora in the theory
of Julia Kristeva in which we fnd a similar understanding
of the interweaving of infant and the maternal body. Both
Anzieu and Kristeva:
1. Question Lacans genealogy of the symbolic
Te Common Skin
A Phantasmatic Image
in Psychoanalysis
by NADINE HARTMANN
126
2. Bring into focus a time that prepends the object choice
and emphasises its meaning for adult love, its pleasures and
its dangers, thus asserting that the romantic relationship is
not primarily centred on a genital logic.
Traditionally, psychoanalytical theory deals with the body
by constructing central arguments around specifc parts
of the body, primarily the genital organs. Freuds theory of
castration centres on the penis or the lack thereof, Melanie
Kleins theory focuses on the motherly breast and its mean-
ing for the infant. In both cases bodily objects function as
phantasmatic objects.
1
For example, an early psychoanalytic
concept that focuses on the body would be that of hysteria
a form of neurosis in which the patient somatises psychic
sufering, meaning she was plagued by inexplicable physical
ailments which via analysis were diagnosed to be conver-
sions of traumatic experiences from the patients childhood.
So, in the case of hysteria, the body appears as a catalyst
of psychic experiences, as a means of communication that
transports information from the inside to the outside.
Tese theories take their starting point from actual
physical markers (of sexual diference) and early infant ex-
perience with these organs which provide them with mean-
ing. Specifc organs and the substances they produce (milk,
semen, urine, faeces) are considered in their properties as
markers of sexual diference, partial objects or fetishes.
Anzieu on the other hand claims that the way the infant
experiences the surface of the body as a connecting enve-
lope constitutes the ground for the possibilities of the intro-
jection of the object. By changing the focus from selected
organs to the one all-encompassing organ, Anzieu attempts
to break free of a thinking that aims to reach a kernel but
ignores the shell, or only conceives the shell as merely in-
dexical of the kernel.
2
Just as the skin covers the whole body,
the Skin Ego strives to cover the whole psyche.
Working on the Border
While Freud focused on the neuroses, Anzieus interest
centres on the so-called borderline disorders which became
more frequent and predominant in the course of the 1970s,
the time of his work on Te Skin Ego. Te term borderline
is defned as a blurring of limits on several levels:
1. Te patient is unable to diferentiate between the psy-
chic and the physical realm as well as between the self and
the outside.
2. Te psychoanalytic categories of neurosis and psycho-
sis are no longer clearly separable in these borderline cases.
In fact, the patient in such a state is sufering from the ab-
sence of borders or limits. He is uncertain of the frontiers
between the psychical and the bodily Egos, between the re-
ality Ego and the ideal Ego, between what belongs to the
Self and what to others; he experiences sudden fuctuations
of these frontiers accompanied by descents into depression,
is unable to diferentiate erogenous zones, confuses pleasant
experiences with painful ones, and cannot distinguish be-
Anzieu attempts to break free of a thinking that aims to reach a kernel but ignores the shell, or
only conceives the shell as merely indexical of the kernel. Just as the skin covers the whole body,
the Skin Ego strives to cover the whole psyche.
127
tween drives, which leads him to experience the manifesta-
tion of a drive not as desire but as violence.
3
Considering these liminal, borderline qualities, it be-
comes evident why Anzieu directs his focus to the shell
rather than to a supposed kernel as Freud did. Te latter
stated that the ego is ultimately derived from bodily sensa-
tions, chiefy those springing from the surface of the body.
It may thus be regarded as a mental projection of the sur-
face of the body, besidesrepresenting the superfcies of
the mental apparatus.
4
While Freud imagined the ego as a
bodily ego, as the projection of a surface, Anzieu claims that
the ego is the surface and therefore calls it the Skin Ego.
By experiencing the surface of the body, the infant for
the frst time grasps the idea of an ego that is whole and
closed. Tis fantasy teaches us that the imagined wholeness
of the ego the infant gathers in the later mirror stage actu-
ally occurs at an earlier stage. Dysfunction in this imagined
wholeness gives ground to the pathological fear that the
body, so fully depicted in its unity, may be fragmented; a
fantasy typical for psychosis. Dysfunction of the Skin Ego
on the other hand may evoke the fear of the covering surface
being pierced, breached or penetrated, with the substance of
the self leaking out, a fear frequently found among cases of
narcissism and masochism, according to Anzieu. Te spe-
cifcs of the Skin Ego are evident in the strikingly binary
qualities of the skin: it is permeable and impermeable,
superfcial and profound, it provides shelter as well as an
interface for exchange. Tus the Skin Ego refects the need
for an inner shell; it contains and protects yet also makes
communication and relation possible.
Sharing a Skin
Te phantasm of the common skin is based on the early
infant experience in which the infant imagines that she and
the mother share one continuous skin.
Te baby has its needs satisfed and, above all, is re-
assured that those needs are being properly understood.
Hence the construction of an envelope of wellbeing, narcis-
sistically cathected, which supports the illusion, necessary
for the formation of a Skin Ego, that a being attached to the
other side of this envelope will react immediately and in
complementary, symmetrical fashion to its signals. Tis is
the reassuring illusion of having an omniscient narcissistic
double at ones permanent disposal.
5
Te mother here functions as a double to the infant,
synchronically recognising the needs and responding to
them. In this early stage of human life, before any imagi-
nary and certainly before any symbolic identifcations have
occurred, the intra-uterine experience is still quite vividly
remembered. Te Skin Ego is an internalised part of the
mother. Tis internalisation in its strongest form creates the
fantasy of an inviolable skin, a fantasy characteristic for the
narcissist.
Touching is the frst self-refexive sense in which we feel
something/somebody while also feeling ourselves feeling.
Te skin therefore functions as an interface between two
bodies. It is easy enough to see how this structural specifc-
ity of the sense of touch nourishes the illusion, even with
respect to later intimate bodily encounters, that there is only
one skin between two people, connecting rather than sepa-
rating, a single skin that functions not as a border, but as a
zone of intense fusion.
Tis phantasm returns in the experience of two lovers:
[T]his is a phantasy later revived in the experience of lov-
ing, in which each partner, holding the other in his or her
arms, would envelop and at the same time be enveloped by
that other.
6
To Anzieu, two people in love supposedly re-
turn to one another what the mother took from them in the
process of separation. Communicating through this com-
mon skin, the temporary illusion of knowing the thoughts,
emotions and afects of the other becomes possible. How-
128
ever, distinguishing himself from the idea of a harmoni-
ous interaction of two competent partners so prominent in
cognitive psychology, Anzieu emphasises the asymmetrical
nature of the mother-child relationship which is actually
based on and remains determined by the helplessness and
dependency of one party.
Skin and Chora
Te pre-symbolic relationship of infant and mother can
be said to constitute the core issue of the theory of French
philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva. Supplement-
ing, yet also contesting Lacans idea of a triadic organisation
of psychic life symbolic, imaginary, real Julia Kristeva de-
velops the category of the semiotic. For her, the semiotic is
the pre-symbolic realm which is ruled by the drives and the
articulation of those drives, constituted around the chora,
a place in which the stases and rhythms of the drives are di-
rected by the motherly body. Tis symbiotic state precedes
the diferentiation between subject and object. Te process
of leaving the chora and constituting subjecthood is difcult
as the infant has to overcome the death drive.
Kristevas Revolution in Poetic Language develops her
theory of the semiotic and the chora in relation to the lan-
guage of avant-garde literature.
7
Tere the chora as a space
of drives enters the language as what she calls the genotext.
Tis genotext inscribes rhythm, stases and afects into the
phenotext, the symbolic organisation of literary language.
Te phenotext cannot dialectically sublimate the genotext,
the latter rather persists as irreducible negativity.
8
Te semiotic possesses a temporary quality since it is
positioned in a time before the infant enters the mirror
stage and fnds her place in a symbolic system. Yet the se-
miotic is never overcome, it and in this regard it is similar
to the Lacanian real continues to pierce through the sym-
bolic, constituting itself as a continually shifing element of
disturbance. Tis duality of semiotic/symbolic manifests it-
self in poetic language and there can be accessed by way of
intertextuality
9
a connecting/translating space between
body and mind. Kristeva would remain faithful to this
dualistic concept yet move from the linguistic approach
of her earlier works to a focus on the psychoanalytic and
cultural as well as political implications and dimensions of
the dualism.
Tus, in Powers of Horror, Kristeva introduces the term
abject as something that is neither object nor non-object.
Te abject is explicitly defned as a borderline phenomenon
that evokes reminiscences of the time in which the subject
was not yet defned as subject, but was tightly linked to the
maternal body: Ultimately, the abject is identifed with the
maternal body since the uncertain boundary between ma-
ternal body and infant provides the primary experience of
both horror and fascination.
10
Te semiotic drives thus con-
stantly threaten to pierce the surface of the clean and proper
symbolic body, or rather: they linger on the surface of the
subjects identity. We may call it a border; abjection is above
all ambiguity Abjection preserves what existed in the ar-
chaism of pre-objectal relationship, in the immemorial vio-
lence with which a body becomes separated from another
body in order to be.
11
Touching is the frst self-refexive sense in which we feel something/somebody while also feeling
ourselves feeling. [] there is only one skin between two people, connecting rather than separat-
ing, a single skin that functions not as a border, but as a zone of intense fusion.
129
Just as in Anzieus phantasm of the common skin, the
experience of the semiotic chora precedes the infants pass-
ing of the mirror stage. Tese two concepts are deeply tied
to the infants earliest physical experience of its relationship
with the mother. Even more so than in Anzieu, here the am-
bivalent nature of the pre-oedipal experience is pointed out
most emphatically.
It is interesting to see what Kristeva has to say about love
and narcissism: Whereas the separation from the mother
enables us to develop an ego, which in any case necessarily
has narcissistic elements, the narcissistic personality can-
not accept otherness, is not open to the world, but closed
in upon itself.
12
In this pathological reaction to the separa-
tion from the mother, the possibility for love is diminished,
since, as Anzieu would suggest, the narcissist imagines the
Skin Ego not as an interface but as an extremely closely knit
envelope. In the re-enactment of the common skin, how-
ever, the two lovers are closed in upon themselves, it seems,
living a temporary idyll that, while being the foundation for
a romantic relationship, will eventually have to give way to
what Anzieu calls intelligent love: Love shows that it is in-
telligent when it helps to create, for the child, the friend,
the partner in life, a supple and frm envelope that delimits
and unifes a bark for their trunk, oxygen for their leaves,
a living skin for their thoughts.
13
A love that allows for the
contrasting qualities that constitute the skin, the Skin Ego,
and, ideally, the common skin shared by lovers.
NOTES
1. In structural psychoanalysis this symbolisation of physical reality
becomes even more apparent when Jacques Lacan famously states that
the unconscious is structured like a language and the signifers of this
language are centred around one master signifer, namely the phallus.
2. Psychoanalytic theorising at large has been powerfully reconstructed
and rearticulated with this opposition of shell and kernel by Nicolas
Abraham and Maria Torok, Te Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of
Psychoanalysis I, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994.
3. Didier Anzieu, Te Skin Ego, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989,
p. 7.
4. Sigmund Freud, Te Ego and the Id, in Te Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works, vol. XIX, London: Hogarth, 1974, p. 25.
5. Anzieu, Skin Ego, p. 44.
6. Ibid., p. 63.
7. See Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1984.
8. Roland Barthes ideas on photography suggest a similar structure
in which what he calls the punctum disturbs the regulating function
of the studium, yet adds to the signifying process of an image. I would
argue that Georges Batailles concept of the heterogeneous as the
persisting, inassimilable remainder in the profane world also follows
this a-dialectical logic.
9. It should be noted that Kristevas use of the term intertextuality
difers from its meaning in common parlance, that is, that of a
locating of the sources of a literary text in other texts. (Te same as her
defnition of semiotic is not to be confused with the general linguistic
use of the term).
10. Kelly Oliver, Te Portable Kristeva, New York: Columbia University
Press, 1997, p. 225.
11. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1982, pp. 9-10.
12. John Lechte, Art, Love and Melancholy in the Work of Julia
Kristeva in: John Fletcher and Andrew Benjamin (ed.), Abjection,
Melancholia and Love: Te Work of Julia Kristeva, London: Routledge,
1990, p. 30.
13. Didier Anzieu, cited in: Naomi Segal, Consensuality: Didier Anzieu,
Gender and the Sense of Touch, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009, p. 195.
Nadine Hartmann studied Comparative literature, Cultural Studies and German at the Free University Berlin and the Pots-
dam University. She is currently writing her PhD dissertation on the theory of Georges Bataille in relation to psychoanalysis at the
Bauhaus University Weimar. She also works as a music journalist and translator. She lives in Berlin.
Skingraphs
by SLAVA MOGUTIN and BRIAN KENNY SUPERM
130
Tc nrst votc is thc dccpcst", 2012
131
8lackout cntanglcmcnt", 2012
132
Ticd Hands, Pullcd Skin", 2012
133
I would so cuddle the
luck out ol you", 2012
134
vcryday rituals", 2012
135
SUPERM is a collaborative multimedia art project formed in 2004 by the Russian-American artist and writer Slava Mo-
gutin (b. 1974) and American artist and musician Brian Kenny (b. 1982). Together theyre responsible for site-specifc gallery
and museum shows across Europe and North America.
SKINGRAPHS is their most recent collaboration, largely conceived during hurricane Sandy and debuted at envoy enter-
prises in NY in the fall 2012.
Rcality bcing too prickly
lor my lolty charactcr", 2012
136
Tattoos and HIV have always had an uneasy relationship
and coexistence. I am not talking here of issues of contami-
nation and cross infection due to the nature of puncturing
the skin and blood letting in the tattooing process. Contem-
porary tattooists are well aware of the sterile and clean en-
vironment required; my own tattooist, maybe rather over
the top, virtually mummifes himself in cling flm to prevent
blood splattering his body. No, I am referring to a troubled
history of marking the skin in order to identify oneself or be
branded by others as HIV-positive. Where someone stands
in relation to the debates about the politics of AIDS repre-
sentation and tattooing can depend on their background,
religious beliefs or political persuasion, perception of tat-
toos, tattooing and people with tattoos as well as their own
HIV status. In this paper I will explore some of these re-
sponses in relation to a recent project of mine: the mark-
ing of my skin with tattoos that refer to a virus circulating
through the veins.
One of the most memorable, controversial and ofen
quoted comments of the early AIDS epidemic was by Wil-
liam F. Buckley Jr., an American conservative commentator
who suggested that, Everyone detected with AIDS should
be tattooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-nee-
dle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization
of other homosexuals.
1
While we might think Buckleys
suggestion has little to do with us these days, it was widely
reported in the papers and online in 2008, some 22 years
later, that a Church of England clergyman, the Reverend
Dr. Peter Mullen, was forced to issue a public apology for
writing in web postings that gays should be forcibly tat-
tooed with a sodomy warning. Afer blaming promiscuous
homosexual behavior for the AIDS pandemic, he is quoted
as having written in his own blog, Let us make it obliga-
tory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with
Tattoo Virus: AIDS
Representation on the
Skin
by RICHARD SAWDON SMITH
137
My Bleeding Heart, 2009.
138
Tc Anatomical Man", 2009.
139
Tc Anatomical Man", 2009.
140
the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR
HEALTH their chins with FELLATIO KILLS.
2
Buckley and
Mullen are clearly attempting to pathologize gay men; the
subtext of visibly labelling someone as HIV-positive isnt
simply a warning to protect others but can be seen as some
form of punishment, as if gay men are somehow inherently
responsible for AIDS. Tose calling for HIV-positive people
to be tattooed as a warning to the general public see tattoo-
ing as a form of branding, the skin permanently marked,
the HIV virus made visible. Te HIV-positive person who
could otherwise look healthy, who could be you or me, is
identifed and signalled out as other. Tese types of com-
ments also generated calls for not just people with AIDS but
all gay men to be quarantined put on an island away from
and to protect the rest of society; presumably the normal,
healthy, law abiding, heterosexual, white, non-drug-inject-
ing and tattoo free populous. Tis project would need to in-
volve a system of identifying a population, making it visible
only to then vanish it. Roberta McGrath commented that a
similar process can be seen in which medical images of the
abnormal body are quarantined to the safety of the archive
in an act of what she has called representational liquida-
tion.
3
Te underlying point is that those who are underrep-
resented are made visible only so that they can be classifed
and categorized and fnally condemned to become invisible
again. Tis understanding of tattoos continues a stereo-
typical association with the criminal, sexually deviant, psy-
chologically disturbed or pathologically degenerate, as if the
tattoo were a mark of corruption. Historically the medical
profession has continued to perpetuate the myth that tat-
toos are a sign written on the skin marking internal trouble
(mental or physical illness) and that if read properly they
can reveal a code that can be used to cure the person. Some
writers have recently tried to debunk these myths, such as
Nikki Sullivan who writes in the introduction to her 2001
book Tattooed Bodies: Subjectivity, Textuality, Ethics, and
Pleasure, I do not want to unravel the mystery of the tat-
tooed body in order to master it, nor do I believe such a
task is either possible or proftable.
4
She also points out that
much of the research underlying psychological studies that
link tattoos to social deviance, was in fact conducted in in-
stitutions such as prisons and hospitals. One example she
cites from an article published in 1963 was undertaken at
the Oklahoma City Veterans Administration Hospital:
Yamamoto et al. pose the question, who is the tattooed
man? [] Te most striking answer to this question
is, according to the three researchers, an ex-sailor who
was tattooed whilst drunk; a psychopath; a schizo-
phrenic; or a permanent juvenile delinquent.
5
Others have ofered new and diferent insights into the
tattooed body from a range of perspectives such as Tattoos:
Philosophy for Everyone, I Ink, Terefore I am (2012)
6
, a
collection of essays in which many of the authors (includ-
ing the academics) are tattooed. However even as recently
as 2010, the blurb on the back cover to Alessandra Lem-
mas book Under the Skin: A Psychoanalytic Study of Body
Modifcation, claims it to be, essential reading for clinicians
working with those who are preoccupied with their appear-
Tose calling for HIV-positive people to be tattooed as a warning to the general public see tat-
tooing as a form of branding, the skin permanently marked, the HIV virus made visible. Te
HIV-positive person who could otherwise look healthy, who could be you or me, is identifed
and signalled out as other.
141
ance and modify their bodies including psychotherapists,
counsellors, psychiatrists and psychologists.
7
Lemma intro-
duces the book to establish her premise (to help people treat
those who believe body modifcations are physically nec-
essary) by recounting her experience of analysing a young
tattooed criminal in prison who had murdered his mother.
Tese debates ofen stigmatise the tattooed body as one to
avoid and generally undesirable. It does not seem such a
great leap then that to tattoo someone with a HIV warning
is to place them in the context of the criminal, sexual devi-
ant and undesirable.
Te Italian clothing company Benetton picked up on
the controversy of branding people with an HIV-positive
warning in its 1993 autumn/winter campaign. Tey pro-
duced three adverts with cropped images of the naked body
with what appeared to be the tattooed words HIV Positive
(although in hindsight they look perhaps more like rub-
ber stampings): one on the arm, one on the buttocks and
a third just above the pubic area. Te campaign solicited
a ferce global response. Benetton, which has always de-
fended its campaigns as attempts to raise political and so-
cial awareness, claims that the HIV-positive images are,
complex metaphors for the more extensive branding prac-
ticed throughout society.
8
However, in France the French
Agency for the Fight against AIDS and the National AIDS
Council (CNS) argued in a joint press release that [t]he use
of the tattoo as symbol, reawakening in the collective psyche
memories of Nazi practices, adds humiliation to stigmati-
zation.
9
Tis sentiment was echoed in the German courts,
which banned the ads in 1994 but subsequently overturned
the decision six years later, claiming that the ban constituted
an infringement of the constitutionally protected right to
freely express ones opinion. Around the same time as the
original adverts release, ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Un-
leash Power) reported that in Italy there had been a series of
gay-bashing incidents in which people had been beaten by
attackers shouting, Wheres your tattoo, queer?
10
Even though the ban was overturned in Germany, the
idea of making the illness visible through tattooing speaks
to deep-seated fears of oppression, stigmatisation and seg-
regation, not least because of the implied relationship to the
Nazi tattooing of people forced into concentration camps. In
addition, the implied referent here is that being gay equals
AIDS, which in turn equals death. Given the negative impli-
cations of tattooing an HIV-positive warning on someone,
it seems unlikely that anyone would actually consider the
same practice for themselves, and yet there is a tradition of
marking oneself as HIV-positive within gay male communi-
ties. For William I Johnston:
Tat gay men might tattoo themselves is an act with a
very diferent and potent political meaning. Such
tattooing [] is a deliberate establishment of identity
that marks ones diference from others in a visible way.
It reveals the stigmatization that HIV positive status
bears in our culture, and expresses in the tattoos per-
manence the ineradicability of HIV within the body.
11
Te tattooing of ones HIV status functions as a symbol
of diference, defance, and a reminder that there is no cure.
It also functions as a warning in some scenarios, and in oth-
er cases even an invitation. In an article entitled Bug Chas-
ers (people who search out HIV-positive people so they
can become infected with the virus) for alternativemaga-
zine.com Daniel Hill writes:
In Gay nightclubs across the U.S. men wear sleeveless
shirts in hope that someone will notice the tattoo HIV-
[] What is not so obvious is that the intention of
such a tattoo is to attract someone who is HIV+. It is an
invitation to infect through having unprotected sex [...]
All that is lef is a trip back to the tattoo artist to have
142
that tattoo adjusted from negative to positive. Simple.
12
Another familiar tattoo in reference to HIV is the red ribbon.
Although this is not necessarily an indication of someones
status, it is ofen worn as an act of support or remembrance
for a friend, lover or family member, more permanent than a
material ribbon worn annually on World AIDS Day. In recent
years, however, a diferent and more ambiguous or coded
tattoo can be found declaring someones HIV status. Graphic
design blog underconsideration.com published an explorato-
ry article entitled Warning: Pop Culture Appropriates Warn-
ing discussing the many implications of the biohazard sign.
Te process of tattooing medical illustrations of veins and arteries on to my arms and chest,
including the heart, also draws blood with the use of a needle. I have simultaneously collapsed
the internal and external together on the surface of the skin.
bscrvc", 2011.
143
Ofen seen at hospitals to warn people that what is inside can
contaminate and be dangerous to human health, the sign,
editor Steve Mockensturm explained, is now tattooed on the
skin as a badge of HIV-positive self-identifcation. Te site
had an immediate response from someone calling himself
anon-a-mouse who wrote:
As a HIV positive gay man, I have embraced the bio-
hazard symbol. My reasons are many, but mainly as a
warning to those around me. I was not informed of the
status of the person who infected me, I do not wish to
infict that on anyone else. By tattooing myself with the
Biohazard symbol, I am letting those who may be in-
terested in a relationship with me know ahead of time,
so they can make a decision weather they want to risk
exposure. In efect, I am using the biohazard warning as
a shield, to protect others, and myself.
13
It is not clear whether protecting myself is meant le-
gally or more likely emotionally, but its interesting to
consider whether making visible ones illness is an act with
My work is constantly suspicious of the infnite surface; every surface can be torn to reveal
another surface, another plane of intensity (Lippit). I challenge the scientifc drive to return to
an idea of wholeness, as I know I cannot return.
Blood Test Film Screenshot, 2010.
144
a very diferent and potent political meaning, or wheth-
er it is, as Mockensturm asks, the potential for discrimina-
tion, harassment and surveillance?
14
Apart from the HIV/AIDS tattoos discussed above that
act as signs of someones status, Mary Richards argues in her
paper Ron Athey, A.I.D.S. and the Politics of Pain (2000)
that there was a direct relationship to, and an increased in-
terest in, body modifcation including tattooing due to the
advent of AIDS in both the straight and gay community. She
argues such modifcations were, and perhaps continue to be,
a way for people to express themselves and their sexuality
[] that heightened their awareness of the body as perhaps
a sexual encounter might, but that did not necessarily ex-
pose them to the new HIV risks now associated with the
reception and exchange of bodily fuids that may occur in
penetrative sex.
15
For Richards these actions, particularly ones that caused
blood to seep by rupturing the bodys surface, created a
body modifed by the individual according to their own
wishes. Tese actions also use the skin as a way in which to
gain a sense of control all too important to someone when
diagnosed with a life threatening illness and to establish a
sense of the individuals own agency and self-determination.
Tis was particularly crucial early on in the epidemic when
there was widespread fear and uncertainty surrounding the
many manifestations of A.I.D.S. related illnesses.
16
***
So far I have argued that tattoos can be used as a pre-
cursor before engaging in sex, the tattoo acting as sign to
establish HIV status; either as warning or invitation for the
right person. And Richards has suggested that body modif-
cation, including tattoos, have been used in a way to replace
sex, or at least fnd a way of experiencing some of the frills
and even risks associated with intercourse. However, my
own work explores a certain reality of living with HIV; it is
not a sign for others. My tattoos and the resulting art works
are all deliberately ambiguous in their potential meaning to
the casual observer but in 2009 I started a project entitled
Te Anatomical Man (born out of a long-standing project
called Observe) in which I had part of the circulatory sys-
tem tattooed onto my body. Since being diagnosed with
HIV in 1994, I have documented through photographs and
flm my consistent, regular and repetitive trips to the clinic
to have blood tests to screen for levels of ill/health. Tis in-
vasive but necessary procedure induces a small amount of
pain but through my work, and perhaps a fetishisation of
the process, I have turned it into a ritual that the work now
demands, as I have more blood tests in order to continue
the project. In some ways creating the work makes the nurse
(their hands visible in the pictures) carrying out the blood
test complicit not only in my own artistic practice, but pos-
sible masochism of subjection, as I submit to the needle and
more painful blood tests.
Tis observation of health, looking for internal signs
of the efect of the virus living in the body, as a barometer
of perceived medical truth by the prick of a needle and the
drawing of blood led to another painful procedure the
tattooing. Te process of tattooing medical illustrations of
veins and arteries on to my arms and chest, including the
heart, also draws blood with the use of a needle. I have si-
multaneously collapsed the internal and external together
on the surface of the skin.
Where I had once made the nurses complicit in my prac-
tice, I now confuse them. Tis is not a mapping of my own
veins and arteries but representations, anatomical drawings
from the 1850s. I am playing with layers of the real and the
imagined, in one respect the work, the tattoos, reveal the
medical procedures of illness, making visible the behind-
the-scenes routines, referencing not only the rupturing of
the bodys surface, but the repetition and banalities of life
145
under the clinical gaze. I am no closer to knowing myself
but have simply presented an alternative another me.
With these ideas of layering on the surface of the skin I
pick up on Akira Mizuta Lippits discussion of the concept
of recovery, which with an incurable disease such as HIV
becomes problematic. He writes:
In the register of health, recovery refers to the process
of healing, of restoring the body to a phantasmatic con-
dition of wholeness. Recovery, the act of recovering,
however, also initiates a semiotic chain that includes
covering, that is concealing, as well as discovering.
17
Similarly, Amelia Jones (when writing about the work of
Franko B) explains:
Te working through of the non-existent borders be-
tween the self and the other, the body and the world,
absence and presence, life and death borders we ob-
sessively attempt to shore up and maintain in the face of
all evidence that they are constructed and thus funda-
mentally unreal.
18
Lippit and Jones suggest that the idea of wholeness that
we obsessively attempt to shore up is a constructed fantasy
and that the medical/scientifc drive is always torn between
the desire to recover the totality of natural phenomena as it
sees it and to disrupt that closure with new discoveries, new
ruptures
19
. In my tattooing of my skin with drawings of the
internal workings of the body, drawings that speak of a virus
circulating through the veins, I too perhaps end up rejecting
the concept of the essence. My work is constantly suspicious
of the infnite surface; every surface can be torn to reveal
another surface, another plane of intensity (Lippit). I chal-
lenge the scientifc drive to return to an idea of wholeness,
as I know I cannot return.
Lippit continues, With each layer that is peeled away
there appears to be another to take its place, rather than re-
vealing an essence of the body we merely add to it another
layer or fragment
20
. And it is in Richards writing about
Atheys performance work, which includes body modifca-
tion and blood letting in relation to his HIV-positive status,
where she implies that for a new subjectivity to become pos-
sible, the old must be fragmented, abandoned. In order to
survive as a subject in a fractured body, one must destroy
the boundaries of ones own subjectivity not just through
pain but by revealing the internal as well.
Im regularly asked by people What do your tattoos
mean? or What made you chose that design? Tus
while my tattoo project could be considered akin to a bio-
hazard sign, a statement declaring my HIV status because
inspiration for the design came from the process of having
regular blood test, you may have had to read this paper to
discover that explanation. It also seems a simplifcation to
think about my tattoos as literal texts illustrating the inter-
nal body, or declarations revealing some true inner feeling
or essence of the body. Being HIV-positive does however
make me consider my being in the world, re-assess my iden-
tity and suggest new forms of subjectivity that informs my
artistic practice. I suggest that in my practice not just the
outputs of photography, video or books but the actual pro-
cess of having blood tests and of being tattooed, of blood-
work being permanent and visible on the surface of my
skin I am trying to work through the non-existent bor-
ders between the self and the other, the body and the world,
absence and presence, life and death (Jones, 2006: online).
Further, bringing the idea of the internal and external to-
gether on the surface of the body collapses some of these
binary modes, points to the non-existence of their poles. My
work insists that the fracturing of old subjectivities does not
return one to a fantasy of wholeness but does ofer potential
for new ways of being in the world.
146
NOTES
1. William F. Buckley Jr. Crucial Steps in Combating the Aids
Epidemic; Identify All the Carriers. New York Times, 18 March
1986. www.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/specials/buckley-aids.html.
[accessed: 4 February 2013].
2. Peter Mullen in Aneurin. Sodomy Warning Tattoo,
Everything2, 15 October 2008. http://everything2.com/title/
Sodomy+Warning+Tattoo [accessed: 4 February 2013].
3. Roberta McGrath. Geographies of the Body and the Histories of
Photography. Camera Austria International, 1995, p. 52.
4. Nikki Sullivan. Tattooed Bodies: Subjectivity, Textuality, Ethics, and
Pleasure. Westport: Praeger, 2001, p. 1.
5. Ibid, 13.
6. Robert Arp. Tattoos: Philosophy for Everyone, I Ink, Terefore I am.
Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.
7. Alessandra Lemma. Under the Skin: A Psychoanalytic Study of Body
Modifcation. Hove: Routledge, 2010.
8. Heather Mills. Nine face trial over Benetton protest: Case revives
dispute over HIV imagery in adverts. Te Independent, 17 January
1994. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/nine-face-trial-over-benetton-
protest-case-revives-dispute-over-hiv-imagery-in-adverts-1407411.html
[accessed: 4 February 2013].
9. Conseil National de Sida. Discrimination: Joint NAC/AFLS press
release on the Benetton HIV-positive campaign. 14 September 1993.
www.cns.sante.fr/spip.php?article84&lang=en [accessed: 4 February 2013].
10. See Mills, Nina face trial over Benetton protest, Independent.
11. William I. Johnston. HIV-Negative: How the Uninfected Are Afected
by AIDS.
Plenum Press: London, 1995, Chapter 21.
12. Daniel Hill. Bug Chasers. Alternatives Magazine. Fall 2000, Issue
15. http://rense.com/general6/sicksicksick.htm [accessed: 4 February
2013].
13. anon-a-mouse in Steve Mockensturm. Warning: Pop Culture
Appropriates Warning. Speak Up, 22 November 2004. www.
underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002147.html [accessed: 4
February 2013].
14. Ibid.
15. Mary Richards. Ron Athey, AIDS and the Politics of Pain. Body,
Space and Technology. Vol. 3, No. 2, 2000. http://people.brunel.ac.uk/
bst/3no2/Papers/mary%20richards.htm [accessed: 4 February 2013].
16. Ibid.
17. Akira Mizuta Lippit. Te X-Ray Files: Alien-ated Bodies in
Contemporary Art. Aferimage, December 1994, p. 6.
18. Amelia Jones. Corporeal Malediction: Franko Bs Body/Art and
the Trace of Whiteness, 2006. www.franko-b.com/text5.htm [accessed:
4 February 2013].
19. See Lippit, X-Ray Files, p. 7.
20. Ibid.
Richard Sawdon Smith is Professor of Photography & AIDS Cultures, and Head of the Arts & Media Department at London
South Bank University. He was winner of the John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery London
in 1997. He is a Board Member of Te bookRoom Press & Archive and on the Editorial Panel of the Journal of Photography
& Culture, a member of the Visual AIDS Archive, Co-editor of Langfords Basic Photography (2007/2010), his photographs
and writing have been published in a wide variety of books, and his work exhibited internationally. // www.aidscultures.com
147
Visible Unseen
by REGINA AGU
And memory, then, is historys mistress. Tat is, memory does not stand outside
or apart from the becoming and undoing that is history. If we can accept that history and
memory are lovers, then we can understand the desire for the bodylife to extend its grasp
beyond mediated temporality. poet Akilah Oliver, from her essay the visible unseen
My work explores hidden and forgotten histories. I delve into shared memories and explore our collective experiences.
I excavate ideas and rituals that we inherit from family, from our cultural and social backgrounds, and from our most basic
instincts. I view my physical body as a reservoir of shared experiences and myths.
I was born into a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural family, with roots in Nigeria and Louisiana, and I was raised across
several continents. Ive always wrestled with having to navigate multiple identities, and with not having a sense of home
or belonging. I explore the intersections between persistent myths and everyday mundane social interactions, between the
politicized other body and my temporal body as I travel through life in this skin, embracing or rejecting labels, either
self-imposed or enforced by the larger collective.
My new work in the series Visible Unseen includes drawings, collages and installations that incorporate a range of
materials and references such as found and original photography, illustrated material from vintage biology and anatomy
texts, and mythology passed down to me from family in Texas, Louisiana and Nigeria. I transform these artifacts into
meditations on the body, collective memory, and layers of overlooked or silenced histories.
I test the lenses of mythology, (afro)futurism, science-fction, and scientifc frameworks. My process is that of a re-
searcher, discovering and documenting layers of memories, much like the way we examine the rings of a cut tree or dig
into layers of earth to reveal the realities of the past.
148
Te Journey Home
Collage, ink,
parchment on paper.
2012.
149
Inner Voices
Collage on vinyl flm,
gold paint on vintage
textbook paper.
2012.
150
Oracle
Collage and gold
paint on vinyl flm,
gold paint on vintage
textbook paper.
2012.
151
Dental Records
(Heirlooms)
Gold leaf, gold paint,
collage on vinyl flm -
gold paint on vintage
textbook paper.
2012.
152
Night Doctors No. 1
Collage, ink, graphite on paper.
2011.
153
Regina Agu is a self-taught visual artist living
and working in Houston, TX. http://reginaagu.com
Editors

Meagan Day
Nicholas Gledhill
Sarah Harman
Juliana Kuperman
Li Li
Kevin W. Molin
Mark Rainey
Guy Sewell
J.D. Taylor
Jenny Wang
Leila Whitley
Contact
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Tanks to
Te Centre for Cultural Studies and Te Graduate
School at Goldsmiths, University of London for their
support.
ISSN 1758-9630
2013 Nyx, a noctournal
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
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issue 8 spring-summer 2013