Paper short abstract:

This paper departs in a multisensory and transdisciplinary artistic practice, where vibration is used to transform our relation to geological matter. It proposes a mode of dynamic difference as a method to reconsider ways of being with the nonhuman, to reconsider our relation to death and mourning.

Paper long abstract:

In geology there is a transformational morphism present, which over time has inscribed layers of resonance and decay into its formations. In these layers, modes of anthropocentric erosion and exploitation exist as slow violence (Nixon 2013) and necroecological plasticity (Filipović 2023), with our human presence written into the earth that we thread. Through this line of thought, this paper wishes to reflect on an artistic way to relate to disaster and mourning through a relation to geological matter, as condensation (Yusoff 2015), where vibration activates layers of the presumed inert.

Through a multisensory and transdisciplinary series of sound art works and performances titled stone-meditation (kivimeditaatio), I have been exploring the resonance of geology, using vibration as a method to transform our relation to matter and mourning, as a dwelling with the in-between, being not-quite-dead. My aim is to consider the potential of geological matter through a mode of difference which is dynamic, indefinite - as a vibration which bounces off and repeats itself; multiplying, and being never quite the same. Difference is here considered a process, a flux, in an ever-changing becoming (Deleuze 1968), where each vibrational mode de- and reactivate their sounding across the surfaces they (re)act with. In our transversal relation to the world, and its ecologies (Guattari 1989), we thus rewrite ways of being with the nonhuman, to (un)learn, attune, vibrate, and reconsider our relation to death and mourning.