Topologies of the Sensitive
The central starting point of this project is NeoNeocortex, a (science) fictional text which draws an analogy between the human body and the "skin" of the world, the so-called "critical zone"; the layer on which the environmentally destructive factors have an irrevocable influence. In this fiction, the neocortex in the human brain, on which different regions of the body are represented, serves as a model, a micro-landscape, to speculate on a scientific method; a method by which scientists apply a topographic representation of the surface of the world to the human body. With this scientific method, the human skin would become a "sensitive map", the influences on the environ-ment would be made directly perceptible on the skin of the individual.
The skin is a boundary as well as a point of connection to the outside ¬ the place where one touches and is touched by others; a place of private, intimate experience and also the most public marker. I use the skin as a place to think about vulnerability, the boundaries between the individual and the collective, interdepend-encies and interconnectedness, and especially to explore ecological questions. It is a practice of listening to the (human) body, to other forms of existence and to the environment. A practice derived from somatic practices and reflected by feminist theories.
The fictional text is the basis for further speculations, dreams, hallucinations and imaginings about interdependencies and interconnections and the starting point for a hybrid corpus of formulations and formats.