Images found here and here. The remaining images are screen shots from the film La Piel Que Habito (The Skin I Live In). The last two images are from the exhibition of Body Worlds, which I have not seen myself, but only heard a lot about.
Considering harnesses, and containments for the body, ways of containing ourselves, I needed to look at skin. After talking with my teacher and teaching assistant, they suggested I look at Body Worlds, and I did not know I could be so... shocked, by something like that. It is incredibly strange to think about these real bodies, but with all of their skin removed, put into incredible postures (I am especially attracted to the athletic and acrobatic ones), in particular because I am reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami right now, and there is a character which is skinned alive there. It feels like a very bizarre coincidence.
So, The Skin I Live In is an incredible movie about a very talented surgeon who constructs artificial skin for humans, or, one human in particular. Slowly, the entire story is revealed to us, and I won't write that much about it, as I think it should be seen. It is like an unfolding piece of origami, that presents itself as an incredible image and object, and as we take it apart, becomes an even more complex pattern, that we do not understand how was made or designed. This film is a lot like that, and I really love the literature and art that he uses to supplement the visuals, especially Alice Munro (who writes a lot about women who run away, or are very unhappy, I think, without having read her) and Louise Bourgeois.
Gal, the woman you can see in the screenshots, is kept isolated. Her skin is extremely tough, as it is made through transmutation, genetic manipulation, basically. She does not burn, and it is very hard to cut. This, set next to 1. Body Worlds, in which the skin is removed and we can see the structures beneath, and 2. Reiko Sudo and NUNO Corporation (which I have not written about yet, as it is a little bit of a divergence from this research, UNTIL NOW), and their fabrics in which they use various metals to thicken them. Clothing and skin, outer and inner structures, containers for the human body, and the edges where we end and where we begin - all of this is contained in the movie, and also, in this research.