Artist/Interdisciplinary Research Mihklepp Marit

Mineral Solitude (working title)

| Yksivuotinen

Every stone is a love letter reaching us from the times long gone, a message written in language surviving catastrophes, mass extinctions, immense transformations of landscapes. Yet, encountering a stone is a rather complicated matter. Looking back to my previous experiences with stones, I would like to build on the silent, catastrophic, extraterrestrial relationships between stones and humans. Human and stone bodies are intimately entangled, as Lorine Niedecker writes “In every part of every living thing / is stuff that once was rock / In blood the minerals / of the rock”. For the rocks we are like butterflies, a flash through the air, so fast that a stone can never be quite certain if the humans ever existed or not. In the end of last year was in a residency in a small village in Canada, where once again I was busy with unfolding the mysteries of the geologic. I sent myself to the Netherlands 12,6 kg of Canadian stones I collaborated with during the residency, and the box, unopened, has been waiting for its time. The opening of and collaborating with the stones found in this box, would mark the starting point of the home residency. I would collaborate with the stones to experiment further on the topics started during residency (fictional meteorites, scanning stones, geologic time perception). I am especially interested in finding a suitable format for my two-year research on the geologic matter. I would need to go through the gathered materials – theoretical, literary, science, historical, alchemical references – in addition to my own artistic pieces. I would also go deeper into the ecological poetry of Lorine Niedecker (especially reading into “Lake Superior” where the stones are in special focus) the writings of environmental feminism scholar Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (especially her book “Matters of Care”). I imagine the book (manual, exercise book, science fiction story) to be made of sediments of the research inspired by the sediments of the stones.