Tattoos & Remediation

 Tattoos can serve as a means of constructing identity, but they also function as remediations. Sonja Neef discusses tattoos as remediations in the context of Derrida’s philosophy, writing: “Skin as a writing surface unfolds a semiotic process that cannot be reduced to the concept of an individual body remaining outside of the process of signification, nor can it be qualified as the material aspect of the signifier only. For the practice of tattooing, it is unavoidable that the body will intervene in the concept of writing…” (222). For tattoos, the body becomes both the canvas and the writer: text exists at its most embodied. Furthermore, this text doesn’t exist within a vacuum.

The photographs shown in this exhibit allude to a range of literary and media references. In the tattoo “Sonnet LXXXI,” lines from a Pablo Neruda poem are juxtaposed against an illustration from a Charles Bukowski poem in a way that generates a personal, emotional response from its creator. In creating this exhibit, I’ve remediated the physical remediations of other material texts into a digital form, shifting the focus again from the materiality of the original tattoos.

 

Works Cited:

 Kosut, Mary. “Tattoo Narratives: The intersection of the body, selfidentity and society.” Visual Sociology. 15.1 (2001): 79-100. Taylor Francis Online. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.

Neef, Sonja, Dijck, José van, and Ketelaar, Eric, eds. Sign Here! : Handwriting in the Age of New Media. Amsterdam, NLD: Amsterdam University Press, 2006. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.

“Tattoos and Identity.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 89.17 (1963): 904. Print.

Velliquette, Anne, and Jeff B. Murray. "The Symbolic Realm Of Body Adornment: The Tattoo As Identity Marker." Advances In Consumer Research 26.1 (1999): 264. Business SourceComplete. Web. 2 Nov. 2015.

Tattoos & Remediation