It’s The Skin You’re Living In

2011-2013

It’s the Skin You’re Living In is a multi-platform film project about climate and connectedness, threading together places as seemingly far apart as islands in the High Arctic and a kitchen in a house in London. It exists as a single-screen film, a multi-screen film installation, and an iPhone app.

It’s the Skin You’re Living In is a multi-format film project. Shot in a series of locations from the islands of Svalbard in the High Arctic to a kitchen in a house in London – via the beaches and headlands of Barra and Vatersay in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, the M11 motorway, a dairy farm in Bedfordshire and the outskirts of Hackney and the Olympic Park in London – the project suggests that climate change isn’t just about distant landscapes and threatened animals, but is an ever present part of everyone’s daily lives.

There is a man dressed like a bear. A polar bear. Sometimes he looks like a person dressed like a bear – like a human in a costume, silly and fake – and briefly he looks like he might actually be a bear – like an animal, real, dangerous and vulnerable.

Over the course of a fragmented journey from the northern reaches of Europe, through Scotland, to the south of England, the bear costume is dismantled, revealing the man inside the animal.

The film is made from broken dances, repeated actions and endless walking. It’s a strange, sad and funny meditation on being human and being animal, lost in a changing world.

It’s the Skin You’re Living In is an attempt to find images for climate change that remind us of how profoundly we’re connected to both nature and culture, how we’re all undergoing change, on a journey, searching for home.

As the ideas of ‘climate change’ that we were working with when we first made the project in 2012 escalate into a climate crisis, the film reminds us that forced migrations, movements of people and redefinitions of where we might make a home are at the heart of the problems we all now face.

The film

The original version of the project is a single split-screen film, available to view online and for screening in festivals and galleries.

The installation

In this second version of the project, seven mobile phones are mounted inside a gallery display plinth. Using wireless syncing technology that was developed especially for the project, the film is played across the screens of the phones, slipping in and out of synchronisation.

Designed to be watched by one or two people at a time, each surface of the plinth is made from a different material, all of which appear in the film: galvanized steel, tarmac, road paint, oiled wood, Victorian hearth tiles and synthetic polar bear fur.

The app

This final instalment of It’s the Skin You’re Living In brings art into the palm of your hand. It used new digital formats to invite people to think in fresh ways about the climate crisis and their place in the world.

Using the same wireless video syncing technology as the installation, the app let iPhone users experience a unique piece of art, in real time and in real life. It was designed to be watched in groups, with each member of the group enjoying different edits of the footage.

By physically bringing people together in order to share this experience, it’s a reminder of just how interconnected we are in this digital world. The app is no longer available, however if you’d like more information about it please contact us.

a man in a warehouse, wearing a fake polar bear head, stretching his arms upwards.

It’s The Skin You’re Living In by Fevered Sleep, 2013

When you think about climate, do you think about home?

A man in a polarbear costume on a beach looks out from under the bear head

Award of Recognition
IndieFest Film Awards 2017

Winner

Meet the Team

It’s the Skin You’re Living In was developed during a residency at the School of Art, Design and Media at the University of Brighton, in collaboration with Professor Julie Doyle, whose research underpins the project.

Costume: Jess Tiller
Direction, Editing, Sound Design: David Harradine
Performer: Robin Dingemans
Music: Danny Manners playing ‘Mouvement Perpétuel No 1’ by Francis Poulenc
Production Management: Ali Beale
VideoSync App Design: Tim Kindberg