Shelley Jackson: Skin
March 1, 2011 - May 31, 2011
Shelley Jackson: still from Skin, 2003; tattoo; courtesy of the artist.
What word are you?
Shelley Jackson’s Skin is equal parts conceptual art, performance art, literature, and Internet art. In 2003, Jackson wrote a 2,095-word short story that will never be published in the traditional sense. Instead, Jackson invited readers to apply to have one word from the story, chosen at random by the author, tattooed on his or her body. The project is ongoing and to date 1,875 applicants have been accepted and 553 have been permanently inked. This topographical writing will live in the world on the bodies of its participants (who are known as “words”) and will die as they do, word by word.
Skin is akin to an alternate reality game in that the Internet provides the glue that holds the project together—its orchestration and viral reach—but much of the action happens offline. Skin literalizes many tropes of Internet art such as decentralized authorship and the networked (common) body. It is part of a wave of “post-Internet art” that ignores the boundaries of online versus offline and assumes the conditions of networked culture into its content as well as its material makeup.
At the launch of Skin, Daniel Pink wrote in the New York Times, "Jackson is encouraging her far-flung words to get to know each other via e-mail, telephone, even in person. (Imagine the possibilities. A sentence getting together for dinner. A paragraph having a party.)" Only now that hundreds of “words” are spread across the globe is such a rally possible. In that spirit, BAM/PFA will host a new virtual gathering of words, concurrent with the exhibition. You might also keep an eye out for the “words” where you live—over twenty of them live in the Bay Area—or you may choose to make the ultimate commitment to art and answer the call: what word are you?
Jackson grew up in Berkeley, currently resides in Brooklyn, and teaches writing at the New School in New York.
Richard Rinehart
Digital Media Director and Adjunct Curator
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