10.17615/4VQK-5D94
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Something That Breaks Your Skin (Bumps and Sags)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
2020
Art
20" x 18" x 2"
In Copyright
Something That Breaks Your Skin utilizes the bodily language from a U.S. State asphalt repair manual as both a starting point and a material. Each one of the photographic works in this series of eight focus on a particular taxonomy of road fault and the associated text from the manual. The photographs recreate example images from the manual, using faults that I found and photographed in the built landscape. Incisions in the mat reveal both the photographs and pertinent text that is appropriated from the manual. In Bumps and Sags, the black and white image of the asphalt rising up and expanding over the terrain is paired with the state’s instructions for, “How to Measure—Bumps or sags are measured in linear meters (feet). If the bump occurs in combination with a crack, the crack also is recorded.” The bodily language contrasted with the clinical nature of naming and measuring suggests the actual modes of naming and measuring that the State uses to claim and exploit both infrastructure and bodies.