© 2014 by James Clark
Under the Skin (2013) fires toward us a maelstrom of visual and aural stimuli. Much of it pertains to electrodynamic frontiers vastly complicating the human component of such motion. Thus we have an introductory passage wherein startling confluences of astronomical light in blue, gold and red play out upon the infinite darkness of a cescendoing cosmos. A musical accompaniment of lacerating and seductive pulsating ringing, clatter, grinding and thundering presses the tension and makes very clear we have come to a history having forever turned its back on the venerable and sedate gratifications of the music of the spheres.
In the orientation just described, there come to view geometric features playing out to a cylinder of sorts that could be a vehicle or a scanner (an MRI, perhaps). Drifting over this incursion are voices calling out, in a blurred way, what sounds like, “…food, feed…cell… cell…” Then the iris of one eye fills the screen, several of its elements pulsing, like a city seen from a great distance. The dark, reddish brown of that organ gives way to a dark landscape with coursing rivulets and a dusting of snow. There’s a winding road seen from far away and from some kind of promontory, and grinding sounds and dangerous speeds recommence. The ominous thrust and noise stop, the motorcycle rider plunges purposefully down a nearly pitch black slope with city lights spreading across the horizon. Soon the rider, with tempered skeletal touches on his leather uniform, re-emerges with the corpse of a woman slung over his shoulder. She is all in black, with net stockings. The narrative moves on to a brightly lit, shimmering space, bringing to mind an operating theatre. But what appears to be the dead girl (or subject of some kind of [genetic?] surgery) is on the glowing floor and another woman—all in silhouette—busies herself with removing from the corpse and putting on her own body the dead young woman’s clothes. Heavy high-heeled shoes going on create a reverberation. And then the newly-outfitted figure gives us reason to wonder what else she has taken from that all-too-mortal victim whom the biker had found as by some advanced technology (or, on the other hand, had he killed her some time before?). The stranger with someone else’s clothes—her tall, vibrantly-toned body being one of great beauty, evident even in the compromised light—reaches down to the recumbent woman with her finger to sample something not factored into the transplant, namely, a trace of vaginal fluid. From the bush where she was accessed, the dead body reveals another curiosity-seeker, a tiny ant, treading through the liquid on the lovely woman’s finger. That iris has readily come into her outfitting. The other area would be part of a work in progress, for a most unusual piece of work. (more…)
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