Skin literacies

tattoo book

I've finally got my copy of Arabic Tattoos (see sidebar for details). It's got my photograph of Ruth's white farasha tattoo (here) in it. There's also a really interesting piece by Jon Udelson on the appropriation of different languages and scripts in skin art. The tattooers' and tattooees' comments are also worth noting. They show the tattooers' concern to get it right, as well as the way the writing is significant to the tattooees. Jon asks the question: to whom does a language belong, but avoids a direct answer. In most cases it seems that the meaning is richer for the bearer of the tattoo (the text?) than for the reader or the writer.

Trouser ban

stencil4
We live in a very visual age – one in which we are regularly photographed, captured on film or CCTV. We publish photographs and moving images of ourselves on the web and are immersed in a media environment which repeatedly shows other human subjects (as objects). In contemporary culture we see more representations of ourselves and others than in previous times. As a result we have become very aware of our appearance, how we look to others, how we dress and how we move – and of course commerce has exploited this new market. We spend more on how we look than ever before - we decorate and surgically alter our bodies. What we wear becomes a statement of who we are, and we feel uncomfortable with a particular group it’s the clothing that gets targeted – whether that’s hoodies, hijabs or big trousers.

Can do

watching paint dry #2
I watched spray-can art yesterday. Here two of the the artists take a rest. There's an interesting sort of parallel play that goes on, in which they talk to each other, share materials and tools, but always appear to work on their own bit of wall. The man on the left is also big on body art (tatoos and piercings) - and the back of his jacket, which is just out of view, is covered in writing about anarchy. He's got to be a genuine metro-textual! I noticed that nearly all of the work combines image and writing. Sometimes the writing is so stylized that it is hard to decipher; other times the meaning is hard to pin down; but at all times it's a very vibrant form of mark-making.

Fading into fame

neck
Unfortunately Ruth’s neck tattoo is starting to fade. It says farashah (butterfly in Arabic) and just as it fades it’s attracting some attention. Jon who works for these publishers emailed me asking for permission to use the white Arabic tattoo for a book he’s putting together called ‘Arabic Tattoos: Documenting the Cultural Skin Behind the Ink.’ We’re so pleased – we may even get a free copy of the book! And Mark Batty publishes some great stuff, too. Other images of the tattoo are here, here and here.

Surfaces for writing

Butterfly tattoo
I was driving the car today when I noticed that someone had written 'I wish i had a car' in the dirt on my rear windscreen. They must have done that in mirror-writing for me to be able to read it. It's probably the simplest act of graffiti - the finger that writes on a dirty white van 'also availbale in white' or 'clean me I'm dirty' or, of course, something less polite... in a similar fashion there's writing on steamed up glass... Then, today, I read in Siri Hustvedt about 'dermagraphism' which seems to have become a generic term for a scratch on the skin that appears like a pattern. But in Hustvedt, it's more of a magical act in which passing a hand over the skin reveals a written message - a sort of psychic tattoo. Mmmm!