Pockets have generated their own universe of custom-designed objects. There are pocket books and pocket knives; pocket watches and pocket flash-lights; handkerchiefs, keys and key chains, wallets, coins, cell phones and ipods; wrinkled notes and special pocket pens. Pockets are responsible for the miniaturization of our lives, the gift of enabling us to be self-sufficient and operational by being able to carry what we need to have with us at any given moment. A few things. Only what fits within. Pockets store, protect and carry our own daily survival kit, no matter if we go trekking or we go to work. They reassure us in our ability to operate in our own terms, in different environments. They are essential to trouble-free living: we lose our car keys, and we’re doomed; somebody picks our wallet from our pocket, and the day becomes simply catastrophic. Pockets are functional in their own chaotic way. They are part of our clothing (word is that the great Max Bill had special, custom-sized pockets added to his coats, to carry his drawing implements). Pockets hide. They keep things out of sight. Shy people keep their hands in their pockets, a habit that I have never been able to understand fully. Hiding the hands is an imposed paralysis that limits the free-flowing propensity to expression that extremities have: it reduces communication to verbal enunciation and suppresses complexity at many levels. What is the form of pockets? How does it predict our lifestyle?
