The Earth tells stories. It’s language is color.

The hunt for pigment yields a magnetic and vibrant pull. Lithic and Mineral agents act together as allies, wielding a strong and vital force – calling out in petric duet for curiosity, discovery and research – a provocation to cross-ontological fellowship.  These companions have things to say, many stories to tell if only we humans listened more humbly, passively, and respectfully.  Their’s are the voices I hear, enticing me to wander landscapes formed by collaborative powers far greater and more complex than ourselves.  Their’s are the voices that have called to others before me – to peoples who understood their knowledge and respected their agency – becoming collaborators through lithic modes of expression and survival, and later, through evolving greed and egoism – to those who cut off their intimate companionship with their nonhuman partners, pushing forward with destructive anthropocentric mentalities of taming their wild aesthetic through extractive industrial practices.

In the present, as an ally and collaborator with these agents, I attempt to transmute the voice of their raw material experiences through archive and art as a means of inserting (as opposed to extracting) their stories into our anthropocentric histories : interrupting our narratives regarding the origins of industrial colonization, technological advancement and the social & environmental injustices that stem from these histories and continue into our present.  These conversations and collaborations with Mineral and Stone, stories told by color, aim to serve as a means to better understand how humans have wounded our precious land, taken advantage of the knowledges and gifts bestowed upon us from these nonhuman agents, and how collaborating with them in kinship can offer opportunities to right our past and present, for a more vibrant future – as “stone is an active partner in the shaping of worlds” (Cohen)

For artwork visit : S E Bachinger