Taken from Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, “sleeves” is the term used for bodies that serve as a receptacle for the human consciousness. The body an individual is born with is called their Birth Sleeve.

A recurring theme in trans-humanist thinking is that one day we will be able to upload our human consciousness into a device which can then be relocated into a new body (re-sleeved), whether naturally born, modified or artificially created.

This exhibition, Birth Sleeves?, is a celebration of the opened sleeves of 7 people from across the diversity spectrum, mostly aged 50+, whose skins have witnessed and recorded their lives in a myriad of ways, some through their own choice, some resulting from bio-technological intervention but mostly from the abrasion of engaging with life as they progress through it.

Here each of us presents our sleeves for visitors to peruse and read, and perhaps consider if they would like to be re-sleeved into one of us.