BECOMING STONE

What is it like to be a stone? Seeing stone, touching stone, hearing stone, smelling stone, tasting stone...thinking stone?

An experience exploring:

What is it to be a stone? Can we find an overlap in our worlds?
Seeing stone, touching stone, hearing stone, smelling stone, tasting stone...thinking stone?

When it comes to the question of what it’s like to be a stone: we don’t know. Sometimes when you say that you mean: “That is what I need to say philosophically, but actually, I kinda do know”. But here we mean, we really really don’t know. In the same way as death, it is not within the space of knowledge.

Underneath the problems of the Anthropocene is a view that humankind has the right to manipulate (create, destroy, alter) other species and our surroundings. This view is called Anthropocentrism - placing the human in the center and on top, the idea that humans have a unique, significant, and exceptional position on the planet. It is the idea that humans are more real than non-humans, because we can think. But thinking is not the only access mode into the world, and it is not necessarily the best access mode either.

It is impossible to show that humans are acting and non-humans are just behaving. This means that they might be just as rich in worlds. Which non-humans do we grant worlds? Can we even include stones?

A move away from human exceptionalism to establish a space of awareness, meaning and solidarity with the non-human. Radically redefining what we allow to exist.

Stones are not not alive.

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Part of Turn To Stone research project.