The Radical Surface reimagines the ‘human surface’ and other material and immaterial skins as sites of contestation, transformation, and transcendence. Inspired by ‘radical imagination’ – ideas rooted in activism and framed as a visionary capacity to foresee a future that transcends current realities – the magazine gestures towards the possibility of profound societal transformation.
Thinkers such as Donna Haraway, Ursula K. Le Guin, Rosi Braidotti, and Pravu Mazumdar have helped shape this thinking, alongside myriad artists, designers, and scientists who speculate on human futurity and multi-species worldings.
Over the following four chapters, this magazine delves into:
9.V. Whakarakei: The Surface Of The Other
The transformative powers of natural materials – fibres, clay, stone, bone, shell – considered by Mãori (Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand) to have wairua (a living soul) that interacts with the wearer.
9.VI. Self-Technology Of Becoming
The surface reflects and refracts the friction between self and society, where identity liquefies into gesture, skin becomes interface, and transformation is method, not metaphor.
9.VII. Shimmering Worlds: A Sense Of Brilliance, And The Lightness Of Being
The cosmic allure of luminous surfaces – metals, gemstones, pearls, polished obsidian – whose light-bound spirituality connects Indigenous American understandings of earth, sea, sky, and morality.
9.VIII. Inner/Outer Glow
The rise of cosmetic technologies as instruments for fabricating identity and beauty – where the surface becomes a substitute for spiritual transcendence.
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