Porous City Katie Etheridge & Simon Persighetti
“To wander through a diverse terrain is to feel the surroundings pass through one’s body as the body passes through the surroundings…”
Robin, C. Moore, Childhood’s Domain (New Hampshire, USA: Croome Helm Ltd, 1986): 57
Porous City is a participatory investigation of the textures, histories, and viewpoints of the places we pass through daily. Etheridge & Persighetti invite residents to experience the unique patina of their town, in a series of public interactions that explore how the places we use everyday can become part of our own mental and physical architecture. Porous City Gallery
Operating as a kind of mobile site-specific tattoo parlour, Etheridge & Persighetti transfer images on to participants skin in the form of temporary tattoos. Hands and bodies become surface or canvas, recording and re-presenting captured images of the city. Aligning themselves with these specific views, and re-photographed in situ by the artists, participant’s bodies became porous to the city in a series of images that blur the edges between street and skin.