Epidermis

Catherine Taylor

I thought you said, 2023

 I thought you said, stay right there, I’m coming right back.

I thought you said, there is almost always another picture waiting behind the first one.

I thought you said, everything is in everything.

I thought you said, bacon, egg, and cheese.

I thought you said, there is an internal reality that determines experiences, reactions, and relationships and that this world inside becomes dynamic in a relational sense, not an energy sense, and so, based on narratives of relating to others, to objects, is felt as being inside the person.

I thought you said that.

I thought you said it was pink.

I thought you said, a paradox is two truths that undo each other.

I thought you said, we should ask for a shoe not for the foot as it is, but for the foot as it should be.

I thought you said, actions create dreams and not the reverse.

I thought you said, the crust was salty.

I thought you said, we got together too soon.

I thought you said that one artist represses the picture as a material object and the other represses their own desire.

I thought you said that collage was the most powerful took of the avant-garde.

I thought you said those sweat stains would come out.

I thought you said it took you ten years.

I thought you said, her breasts were white with blue veins.

I thought you said, she pushes out of the flat pictorial plane into personality and suspense.

I thought you said you were done with that.

I thought you said you loved the smell of your own piss.

I thought you said, it began that morning in Ridgewood when the parrots were screaming behind the wall.

I thought you said, all we can do with language is to drill one hole after another into it until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through.

I thought you said, her father gripped her finger.

I thought you said, roll over.

I thought you said you couldn’t commit.

I thought you said, nothing describes I lived experience adequately.

I thought you said, part for the whole.

I thought you said, the monologues have lost their bodies and are, if not pure language, an embodied language without its body.

I thought you said, make it funnier.

I thought you said that the objects move too slowly, unlike with a zoetrope where speed helps resolve the image, here, their shifts in perspective reveal only more of the same and only produce a goofy sadness, a droll disappointment, an attention to the object that feels pathetic and tender.

I thought you said that being together has been almost too wonderful to believe.

I thought you said to push those feelings back into the pictures.

I thought you said, I drank too much. I mean, you drank too much.

I thought you said, when will I stop crying?

I thought you said you liked pickles.

I thought you said you like mushrooms.

I thought you said you liked fried onions.

I thought you said, the baby was falling out of the bed, a little pebble slipping off a cliff. 

I thought you said you liked misdirection and anti-heroic forms of magic.

I thought you said your life was richer when you were single.

I thought you said I was your ride or die.

I thought you said, time is ineffable and can only be shown indirectly through images that can never reveal a complete picture.

I thought you said, Buster Keaton.

I thought you said, let’s try again.

I thought you said, Killing Me Softly was your mother’s favorite song.

I thought you said, hell hides in a ditch and my eyes are dry.

I thought you said, no.

I thought you said that the notational qualities in my book seemed to allude to the Euclidean geometry of history.

I thought you said, parallax.

I thought you said, yes, there was an uncanny you liked, but the spectacle steamrolled the subtexts.

I thought you said, Wow! What is happening to time?

I thought you said, I’m stuffing another day into the start of this one in order to write to you before I see you again.

I thought you said, wait for me.

I thought you said, I’ll see you later.

But, no.

Peter This story provides a simple illustration for the difficult relationship between machine and body, man and machine. It also addresses another problem with technology, that its perfection might one day eliminate the difference between man and machine. Would there be, sometime, computer- robots, intelligent machines that perfectly simulate man? Clearly any thing, any “Substance”- uses the term Zeug-is basically amorphous. Material objects also give away something about their producer. First of all any manmade object inherently displays its maker’s properties, simply by being made by man. Secondly, they repeat human behaviour through the purposeful delegation of human properties onto them. It is obvious that machines are constructed to enhance, take over, or replace human functions. Freud gives an exact description of their functioning as artificial limbs. We construct machines to satisfy human needs; therefore any machine will display anthropomorphous properties. The point is that on account of this desired anthro-pomorphism the machine will be perfected to such an extent as to be able to replace humans, which is in turn lamented. Stupidly so, as the aim of such anthropomorphisation must lie in the perfect simulation and eventual substitution of humans.

Basto ‘telling y’ll, ain’t get nothing when you talk like that. reality should feel like an automatic no-brainer.

Isabel Anyway, Chachki two-tone-two-piece now says that they don’t think normal time travel (they just said ‘normal time travel’, I’m dead, I’m buried) goes back beyond 2007, they think that 2007 is as far back as it goes, I start walking away at this point, away from my block, down Delancey.

Suely For me, WHAT REALLY MATTERS is the creation of a language. The issue is to peel off the sensation of subjective consistency, peel off the identity model; to displace oneself from the identity-figurative principle in the construction of an “at home.”

Isabel Chachki pomade continues, looking left, looking right, the longer they’ll stay, the higher the likelihood of running into their former self accidentally.

Siobhan When I was a kid I had a thing for time capsules. The reality, of course, is that our earthly environment is as much a part of the cultural world as the natural, and natural resources like oil, agriculture, and patented organisms are major epicenters of human power. But in day-to-day life, it is possible to construct a false notion of separation as a matter of routine.

Isabel Chachki purple-orange now says, throwing their hands up. ‘None of this was thought through properly, ok?!’ ‘I don’t even know what to say.’

Basto Sure, love, I say, you’re all so unreal.

Siobhan In this story, time doesn’t progress in an easily digestible straight line, with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, there are many timelines, each darting around, bringing actions of the past and future into the present.

Conversational AI between Peter Weibel, Isabel Waidner, Siobhan Leddy, and Suley Rolnik on reality and simulation. Basto is a requested additional character

Michelle Weinberg. Untitled, 2023. Drawing on paper. Color modified for this website.

Millennium Film Workshop

167 Wilson Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237

Live Performers: Holly Overton & Joseph Wakeman

Social Matrix

©2023 Analogon Skin

Exhibition Organizer and Producer: Odalis Valdivieso

Co-Producer: Joseph Wakeman

Copy Editor: Gretel García

Video Editor: Adrian Cameron

Special thanks to Alex Waterman, viz_well, Alex Faoro, Preston Spurlock, and Darling Green Studio for equipment support