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Introduction: Language is a Skin, and so too, Time-Based Media
By – Liam Otero
Whether it is a conscious decision or otherwise, every successful graduate-level art program typically adheres to a particular philosophy or methodology in how its students approach their craft. The MFA Photography program at Parsons exemplifies this phenomenon through the highly conceptual approach its 18-strong coterie have taken in photography, video & moving image art, and even kinetic sculpture.
This is all the more significant when considering the exhibition’s title, “Language is a Skin”, a quote from French philosopher Roland Barthes’s postulation on language’s capacity to simultaneously reveal and conceal itself. Though the artists applied Barthes’s idea toward the investigation of identity,
I found an equally pressing theme that remained in line with the Barthesian reading here. The parameters of time-based media are just as liminally complex according to the creative choices each student has undertaken in their explorations, critiques, and observations of photography and its close cousin mediums.
The interdisciplinary processes embedded into the thesis projects primarily examine relationships between memory and the archive. Much of the work has been rather non-photographic in this regard, be it via sensorially evocative “mental photographic” conceptual works or durational, borderline cybernetic studies in temporality.
Elsewhere, another layer of skin to time-based media has been the performative elements as denoted in self-portraiture, gender & queer-centric desire, or diaristic documentations akin to Kitchen Sink Realism. Subsequently, these experimentations yielded probing inquiries that entail the disruption of linear time, institutional critiques of oppressive power systems, and reframed outlooks on ecology.
Though time-based media is often synonymous with two-dimensional mediums, the majority of works extend into the physical space where we the viewers stand, thus rendering our relationships with the art all the more personal. Floor-to-ceiling cyanotype tapestries and voyeuristic boxed videos encourage contemplative perambulation while sequential photo-installations and accompanying photobooks necessitate a multimedia dialogue. Pivoting from here, multi-sensory elements are incorporated into the visual schema with further considerations extended to aural, olfactory, and tactile sensations.
For as large as this group may be, they are not so dissimilar as their interventions in expanding the scope of time-based media has become a common thread. The 18 artists have been together on a near-continual basis for the last two years and are acutely aware of one another’s artistic motivations, yet everyone is concentrated on their respective work. That reality is what makes this all the more enchanting seeing that a cohesiveness came about rather organically, especially when noticing the pervasiveness of time-based media’s inextricable connections to memory, archives, and time. Returning to Barthes, language is a skin that contains an infinitesimal range of meanings that inform,
contradict, and impact its very existence. Having witnessed the progress of each students’
thesis projects, I found they proved time-based media, too, is a skin whose layered
meanings enables us to forge a more intimate and emotionally resonant relationship with
photography.
A Laceration – Encountering skin through language
By – Kanishka Kanishka
We carry our skin our whole lives, and it carries our matter. Skin is the organ closest to us. It forces us to confront it. Its entireness and impression encapsulate the body wholly. Perhaps, the excess of it makes the looker conclude us before getting to know us. I question, if our hearts, guts, and brains dangled on the exterior, how would the looker perceive us? Would this threaten the entirety of skin?
Through image-making or even making, my peers in various ways are creating an excess of language and processes that can outdo the totality of skin and transform it to encapsulate more than just one body. Thinking of skin as community, skin as absence, skin as history, skin as ground, entangles us to something more than ourselves and each other.
In almost an instant, at any point in one’s life, skin can burst open due to internal, external, spiritual, or alien forces. Then, how do we evolve past such destruction?
Since the universe claims to have begun from a bang, I would not neglect the possibility of creation in the obliteration of skin. In fact, I believe that at this moment, an artist becomes the host of this fiery hell, until they/she/he/it releases it in a form.
Formulating a language is often the beginning of this practice. An endless saunter with a friend, gatherings with strangers, conducting intimate experiments, indulging in care, or even talking every day to your mother can birth this language.
Now, there might be an urge: To repair the holes of the skin or tear them further and look into a pit that is often opened just to mend. This is when we are drawn to material. We witness the rise of an exploratory frenzy, a voyage to seek materials— either to overtake, collaborate, or manipulate. Material is language. It is also skin. It is living. It can embrace the art onto its skin, or it can reject it. Some might find comfort in experimenting with materiality, allowing heaps of unravelled skin to accumulate, leaving it to decay; others might stretch it to reveal its vastness. All acts are vital to the progress of regeneration.
Once our affairs are in order, we can await death. However, if we don’t achieve an equilibrium, we can carry on and live forever through the skin(s) that tie our temporalities and the language that can be carried on, dismantled, and rebuilt over and over again.