Malleability

This pen is impermanent. This agenda is impermanent. Plastic, ink and paper, each according to its chemical characteristics, each according to physical events which will face, sooner or later give up their form, the form that for various purposes has been given by the man; no longer called plastic, ink and paper, but something different. The keyboard with which I copy what I wrote on the agenda is impermanent; the screen that returns me information of what is happening inside the computer into machine language is impermanent; the hard disk on which are stored sequences of 1 and 0 is impermanent. All the tools and support to make the matter thought, or all the tools to transform the matter according to the thought, are impermanent. However, if all the matter was not permanent, it is not possible to give it a form; Therefore, it is thanks to impermanence of matter that we can shape it, and profit from its provisional configuration. Perhaps the universe suggests that everything flows; and that in this flow in transformation, thanks to the evolution of the subject, the effort to create stable systems, and the ability to create copies, there is in some form a survival. All this leads us to consider in another perspective the concepts of identity and possession, even in the context of art. Like it or not, as far as we can try to lengthen her life, even the Mona Lisa is impermanent.