In a conference given in 1966, Michel Foucault conceptualized the human body as the point zéro du monde, literally the starting point of the world. Quintessentially, from its lines or through its depth, a body lays out the universe and determines, even politically, one’s connection to his environment.

Although physical, as any frontier it is an agent of inclusion or banishment. Ultimately, a ravaged body sentences its owner to a form of social exile.

My friend Antoine Catala told me about a museum in Paris that somehow classified some of these exiles. It collects casts of skin diseases.

Located within the walls of the Hospital Saint-Louis, the Musée des maladies de peaux owns 4807 pieces predominantly manufactured by Jules Baretta between 1884 and 1913.

Michel Foucault, Le corps utopique, Radio feature: France Culture, 1966
French, no subtitles (sorry).

CLOV: Why this face, day after day?
HAMM: Routine. One never knows. (Pause.) Last night I saw inside my breast. There was a big sore.
CLOV: Pah! You saw your heart.
HAMM: No, it was living. (Pause. Anguished.) Clov!
CLOVE: Yes.
HAMM: What’s happening?
CLOV: Something is taking its course.
Pause.
HAMM: Clove!
CLOVE: (impatiently). What is it?
HAMM: We’re not beginning to…to…mean something?
CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something! (Brief laugh.) Ah that’s a good one!
HAMM: I wonder. (Pause.) Imagine if a rational being came back to earth, wouldn’t he be liable to get ideas into his head if he observed us long enough. (Voice of rational being.) Ah, good, now I see what it is, yes, now I understand what they’re at! (Clov starts, drops the telescope and begins to scratch his belly with both hands. Normal voice.) And without going to far as that, we ourselves… (with emotion)… we ourselves…at certain moments…(Vehemently.) To think perhaps it won’t all have been for nothing!
CLOV: (anguished, scratching himself). I have a flea!
HAMM: A flea! Are there still fleas?
CLOV: On me there’s one. (Scratching.) Unless it’s a crablouse.
HAMM: (very perturbed). But humanity might start from there all over again! Catch him, for the love of God!
CLOVE: I’ll go and get the powder.
Exit Clov.
HAMM: A flea! This is awful! What a day!
Enter Clov with a sprinkling-tin.
CLOV: I’m back again, with the insecticide.
HAMM: Let him have it!
Clov loosens the top of his trousers, pulls it forward and shakes powder into the aperture. He stoops, looks, waits, starts, frenziedly shakes more powder, stoops, looks, waits.
CLOV: The bastard!
HAMM: Did you get him?
CLOV: Looks like it. (He drops the tin and adjusts his trousers.)
Unless his laying doggo.
HAMM: Laying! Lying you mean. Unless he’s lying doggo.
CLOV: Ah? One says lying? One doesn’t say laying?
HAMM: Use your head, can’t you. If he was laying we’d be bitched.
CLOV: Ah. (Pause.) What about that pee?
HAMM: I’m having it.
CLOV: Ah that’s the spirit, that’s the spirit!
Pause.

Tomorrow! Exhibition of our personal friend, faithful contributor and legendary graffiti writer turned photographer Joao Ribeiro and featuring an exclusive performance of legendary N.O. MC Big Freedia.

Special guests Lorenzo Cirrincione, Queen Latimer and Jennifer Teets pleased the Genevan crowd at Blondeau, last Friday. There were poems read, an image projected, nails pasted, champagne drunk, many magazines sold and after that, much money spent on sparkling water to keep up with the sexy sounds of the prince of techno, at Silencio.