Dichter op de Huid - O dubbel d

a piece of art, sometimes a model and sometimes merely a train
of thoughts originating from the same source. Is it art to market
this feeling as we allow ourselves to be sold the micro-solvent skin
emulsions by firms selling illusions? Misleading, but then again not
misleading. We want to believe. Our fate is to know, to experience
directly or to imagine.
Language is a glove pulled tightly around the skin of the contents
Godfried Boman
The unimaginable
In classic physics and geometry one wondered how much land
could be closed in by the skin of a bull. More abstract: find, given
the length of the curve, the maximum surface area that can be
enclosed by it. The surface area is at its greatest in a circle, said
Aristotle. Classic physics explains what can be observed, what can
be measured, such as the attraction or repulsion between magnetic
poles. Modern physics now believes in the non-observable too, that
which has been thought up, such as the theoretical construction of
atoms and molecules or the theory of relativity. Modern physics is
the domain of thought artists.
The skin consists of millions of tiny cells. More than 600.000
of these cells are needed to cover a postage stamp. In chemical
models, atoms resemble empty space, “If the particles in the core of
an atom (protons and neutrons) had the diameter of 1 cm, electrons
would be smaller than the width of a hair. The diameter of the
entire atom would be larger than the length of 30 football fields.
We experience matter as solid, impenetrable matter, even liquids
and gasses we are unable to really penetrate as we move between
the molecules, which are in fact deflected from our skin. How can
we imagine that we keep bumping into empty space?” (Willem
Houtgraaf).
In fact, if matter has the characteristics of a wave and a wave
of matter, and if mass and energy are interchangeable how can skin
be skin? Is skin like woven bamboo in which the cross sections create
the connection? How loosely could it be woven?
the unknown depths ourselves. A golden, human handprint in a
solidified crystal bubble? And what is the essence, the spot or the pus?
Is the skin an infinitesimal point that stretches across
the universe, no, across the heavens and Earth? Is the skin a Big
Bang, change taking place in milliseconds, nanoseconds? Is the
skin an endless point which we only see when we look through
the transparency? Is skin the curve of infinity, the spiral that only
requires a disruption invisible to the eye to exist and grow into
infinitely expanding proportions? Is skin Adam and Eve, the
beginning and the end? Nivea?
Skin is fragmented; everybody makes their own.
Oh, those Greeks! wrote Nietzsche, They understood how to
live. What you need for that is to be brave and stop at the surface,
the fold, the skin, to worship appearance, to believe in forms,
tones, words, the whole Olympus of appearance. Those Greeks were
superficial -- out of profundity...
About / On / IN / Under thE skin
Essay The cookbook of our knowledge
Amen
Is skin merely an idea which you are free to speculate on? That
takes on another form every time we look, another meaning in
another train of thoughts? In Silence of the Lambs, a serial killer
sewed coats made from fat women’s skin. Believable? Watching the
film, believing is easy. Is the all-covering skin that which hides the
monsters? That has crocodiles hatch out of eggs as if by magic, while
we were expecting chicks? Skin is what we want to see in it, what we
want to believe it to be. Skin is the superficiality in which we create
60 Nationaal Glasmuseum Leerdam / Fort Asperen Skin Deep / Dichter op de huid 61