The surface manifests the direct relationship between memory and oblivion. As topography, field of action, workplace or simply space, it bears signs and traces of movements, practices, rituals and repetitions.
The surface of the body, the skin, can betray habits, activities, the passage of time, the state of our health. The skin itself is a shield, a protective layer and the largest organ of our body with a surface area of 1.5-2.0 square meters for the average person. With sensors everywhere, we feel and touch. Touch becomes our navigator to explore, search and investigate.
Clothes, as an extension of the body, as a second skin, cover the body and acquire memory, are shaped and modified accordingly, while at the same time concealing the materiality and reality of the body. Clothes away from the body, lose movement, become empty and inactive. Another body can fi ll them and move them. The previous memory is partially lost. When someone wears second-hand clothes, they always wonder who wore them before, their age, their build, their personality.
A surface can hide things, it can cover and conceal. After all, it marks the boundaries of inside and outside. We invent ways to see through a surface, we wrap things in cellophane, we use glass to make transparent openings in buildings, we scan the human body to get a glimpse inside. Transparency is important to see beyond the surface, and achieves revelation and knowledge.
But memory can easily be lost. As on the vast red surface of Mars, where only traces of something that existed before remain; history can also be distorted, the passage of time can flatten information. Sometimes we can only speculate. But what does the absence of memory bring, if not freedom in its most optimistic version, or lack of knowledge at worst. And what are we if not modifiers of objects and surfaces?