PLANETARY SKINS explores the materiality of the real and the digital. Configuring an osmotic skin between virtual and physical spaces, PLANETARY SKINS explores the potentials, ambivalences, and conflicts induced by hybrid forms of presence. As such, the virtual is not the representation of an artificial 3D-world but acts as a membrane to connect actual places and people across three continents.

A post-disciplinary prototype for probing into the matter of emerging ideas, materials and synergies, the art project unfolds an arena that brings together performance, conversation, installation, soundscape and film set. In an era increasingly fragmented and amalgamated by global digital platforms, PLANETARY SKINS exists as a laboratory to imagine new forms of ecologically, socially and artistically engaged collective practice.

PLANETARY SKINS responds to interconnected phenomena evoked by layers of scientific and technological advancements as well as critical social and ecological conditions. Delving into various strata of matter, the art project considers the fragility of our technopolitical, economic and cultural frameworks, and the role of digital connectivity in asserting, affirming or alleviating these fissures.

PLANETARY SKINS is the third season of The Future of Demonstration. In this art series, Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler with their collaborators and partners investigate ways of evoking the aesthetic, technological, and political forms of resistance offered by the term demonstration. Conceived by Eckermann and Nestler in collaboration with Maximilian Thoman, the first two seasons of The Future of Demonstration were realised as the Media Art Festival of the City of Vienna in 2017 and 2018.