Michel Serres

Tattoo

"The soul, in patches, shapes the tattoo, the set of crossed lines drawing a force-field: the space occupied by the formidable pressure of the soul in its efforts to erase gently the shadows of the body, and the major entrenchments of the body to resist this effort. On the skin, soul and object are neighbors. [...]
The ecstatic transformation, the loss of the body into the soul, removes the tattoo."
- Michel Serres, The Five Senses (p. 25)
Cropped detail of intaglio print, "Tracings", Amanda Clyne

Cropped detail of intaglio print, "Tracings", Amanda Clyne