CORE: other others, rehearsals in the skin
Core was presented by Touch Praxis as part of other others//rehearsals in the skin at Human Resources Los Angeles, May 2-5, 2025.
Offering a collision of fleshy proximities, felt theory (Dian Million, 2009) and porous encounters, other others // rehearsals in the skin brought together artists, practitioners, and facilitators to explore how we relate, connect, and feel—together. Imagining curation as a process of community building, this layered project threaded conversations across bodies, decades and continents, bringing into contact over 40 (old and new) collaborators. other others considers anti-colonial forms of touch as a method for collectively dreaming Disability justice, ecological repair, Palestinian liberation, and queer futurity.
Core presents a speculative sample of living plastic tissue in a vibrating glass display case, like a biopsy of plastic terra or flesh
Materials are layered like strata: a base layer styrofoam bedrock rests under strata of partially consumed plastic rubble and dirt. Plastic-metabolizing insects navigate the layers, consuming and transforming the plastic into energy for their own bodies and, ultimately, dirt. This tower of glass and plastic and time stands at 65 x 17 x 15", roughly the volume of an adult human body, but this is a body with transparent skin that reveals its own impurity, heterogeneity, and perpetual metamorphosis. This core also asks to be heard. Rigged with built in microphones, Core uses a transducer placed at heart level to vibrate itself with the sound of its becoming. Visitor will be able to hear this sound of metamorphosis through the open air. Or they can place their ear or temple to the face of the cabinet itself to hear more deeply through direct vibration and touch.
Video and photo credits: Nina Sarnelle
