Desquamation
Desquamation is an expanded cinema and performance piece about the different ways we shed our skins and become something else as we connect more of ourselves with digital technologies. It tells multiple stories of psyche, emotion and opinion, and renders them in a not too distant future. These stories may tie together, but do not follow one train of thought, or style. Through this multiplicity, the work allows speculative visions of the future to unfold alongside a multi-layered, multi-skinned self-portrait.
Desquamation, literally meaning the process of shedding skin, extends this metaphor into the digital condition. As identities migrate into virtual environments, the work questions not only what is gained through technological augmentation, but what is quietly relinquished. By framing digitisation as a physical shedding, the project seeks to render intangible transformations haptic and perceptible — asking which aspects of the human condition are preserved, which are exchanged, and which are discarded in the process.
Structured across five autonomous sections — Birth, Death, Emotion, Sexuality, and Spirituality — the work unfolds as a series of discrete yet interconnected levels within a speculative meta-space. Each segment isolates a fundamental dimension of human experience, allowing it to be examined as though translated into a digital ontology. Rather than following a linear narrative, Desquamation operates as a constellation of parallel investigations. Themes echo across sections, but no single storyline governs the work; instead, viewers are invited to navigate conceptual gaps and assemble their own associations within a multi-layered self-portrait of becoming.
Presented in a performative setting, the work is experienced through a large-scale, cinema-like projection. Lane performs the piece live, seated before the screen and navigating the virtual environment in real time. The audience is positioned behind him, observing both the projected world and his silhouetted presence within it. This staging establishes a layered spectatorship: viewers watch the digital space unfold while simultaneously witnessing the act of its traversal. The over-the-shoulder perspective reinforces the work’s meditation on mediated experience, positioning the audience as voyeurs within a system that blurs embodiment and representation.