Skin & Bones | Judith Seng

Skin & Bones explores the activity of space-making as a continuous negotiation between bodies, objects and spatial structures. Laid on the ground, a flat, apparently two-dimensional square of Canvas* – the ‘skin’ – waits to be activated by the ‘bones’: an assortment of shaped tools employed by human bodies. Together they can generate an endless variety of sculptural forms and interior spaces. Once activated, Skin & Bones unfolds like a fluid, socio-material structure that reveals the activity of space-making like three-dimensional sketching with Canvas in space.

* Canvas (noun)
1. A heavy, coarse, closely woven textile of cotton, hemp, or flax, traditionally used for tents and sails.
2. A piece of such textile on which a painting, especially an oil painting, is executed.
3. The background against which events unfold, as in a historical narrative.
4. A tent or group of tents. A circus tent.
5. Sports. The floor of a ring in which boxing or wrestling takes place.

Judith Seng

Judith Seng (Germany, 1974) is a Berlin-based designer who explores the possibility of expanded design practice, taking a choreographic approach to address the socio-material dynamic. Her design work is situated in contexts that range from the applied and everyday to international exhibitions and the academic realm. She co-developed the trans- disciplinary, practice-based research project Design Reaktor Berlin at the University of the Arts Berlin to explore exemplary production scenarios in the post-industrial context of the city. As Fellow of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at UdK Berlin she initiated the experimental production series ACTING THINGS in which process design is explored with elements and methods from the performing arts. The fourth iteration of ACTING THINGS was commissioned for Design Miami/Basel 2013. The sixth ACTING THINGS experiment took place at Kyoto Art Center in July 2017 following a residency at the Goethe Institute’s Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto, Japan in 2016. Seng is also guest professor in design at HDK – Academy of Design and Crafts at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.