I am investigating surface relations within assemblages as sites of artistic translation. In this context, surface relations are understood as material and spatial domains through which translation unfolds. In contrast to conventional linguistic models of translation, which emphasise the transfer between source and target languages, this doctoral thesis conceptualises translation as a relational process that arises through contact, correspondence and negotiation. Whilst not every relationship constitutes a translation, I argue that translation takes place where surface relationships configure meaning, agency and material presence.
Drawing on Tim Ingold’s concept of the palimpsest and on theories of material agency, surfaces are understood not as passive boundaries, but as sites where material and semiotic processes emerge together — not as edges that divide inside from outside, depth from surface, but as zones where these distinctions are continuously unsettled. Assemblage works both as an artistic technique and as a research method: it relates heterogeneous surfaces — objects, materials, images, texts, gestures — to one another, tracing how meaning and material presence shape each other.