Skin to Skin (Hud mod hud)

Large scale photographic images mounted on concrete

Created for Wadden Tide Festival 2016, Blåvandshuk, Denmark - 08/31/16 - 10/02/16

Curated by Anne Mette Laursen

              

              

Invited by curator Anne Mette Laursen to create a piece for the biannual Wadden Tide Festival taking place within the Wadden Tide National Park and UNESCO site, I proposed "Skin to Skin." By attaching large prints of photographic close-ups of one architectural form to another, "Skin to Skin" compresses the physical and historical distance between a German WWII bunker at Blåvandshuk on the Wadden Sea and Battery Townsley, a WWII bunker in the Marine Headlands, north of San Francisco. Intimate photographs of the weathered facade of the allied bunker are blown up and attached to the surface of the axis bunker. With the aged hide of the one wrapped around the dilapidated concrete form of the other, "Skin to Skin" creates intimate contact between two violent histories forever frozen in a westward gaze. Both architectural structures were built during the second world war, and both remain: quiet, forgotten witnesses to a time of fascism, isolationism, and genocidal prejudice that must not be allowed to repeat. 

- Text written in collaboration with Anne Mette Laursen

This project could not have been completed without the unflagging support of Anne Mette Laursen, Thomas Laursen, Mr. and Mrs. Ahlgreen, Khedidja Benniche, Anna Lise Jensen, Rebecca Redman, and Ilana and Zena Barakat.

Thank you for your time, effort, and ever present generousity.

And many thanks to Sky-Work for their gravity defying installation assistance. Please click here and scroll down a bit to see a drone video of Skin to Skin filmed and edited by Sky-Work.