“Cutaneous Vision” is a video composed of material culled from the bewildering array of corporeal images – body parts, medical models, aesthetic attachments, and tools for bodily ‘enhancements’ sold online. They are organized around the text, read as a voiceover that addresses bodily concerns ranging from the discomfort with the body to indulgence in the pleasure of its manipulation. The narration draws from texts on body politics and manipulation (Silvia Federici “Beyond the Periphery of the Skin,” Anne Boyer “The Undying,” Deleuze and Guattari “Body Without Organs”), and my own. Occasionally, the flow of images is interrupted by fingers scrolling aimlessly through these images on the screen, as if shopping for body parts or ‘enhancements’.
The clicking sound in the background is the binaural sound of my joints cracking; while it sounds more like a technical glitch, it calls attention to the tenuous closeness between the real and the artificial already present in the video. The resulting video blends visceral fiction and humor to question if new technologies enhance control over our bodies or if they turn our bodies into objects of experimentation and profit-making..