Walls

'I put a picture up on a wall. Then I forgot there is a wall. I no longer know what there is behind the wall, I know there is a wall, I now longer know this wall is a wall, I no longer know what a wall is. I no longer know that in my apartment there are walls, and that if there weren't any walls there would be no apartment. The wall is no longer what delimits and defines the place where I live, that which searates it from the other places where other people live, it is nothing more than a support for the picture. But I also forget the picture, I no longer look at it. I have put the picture on the wall so as to forget there was a wall, but in forgetting the wall, I forget the picture, too. There are pictures because there are walls. We have to be able to forget there are walls, and have found no better way to do that than pictures. Pictures efface walls. But walls kill pictures. Sp we need continually to be changing, either the wall or the picture, to be forever putting other pictures on the walls, or else constantly moving the picture from one wall to another.

georges perec , "species of spaces and other pieces" (1997)