To feel as a Rock

Unfolding through an inquiry into foraging as an artistic method, the ethics of extraction, and engagement with sustainable art practices, this work asks how intimate knowledge and relationship with Land can be cultivated. Drawing panpsychism, animism, and vital materialism, the work frames artistic gesture as a site of transformation, inclusive of nonhuman mark-making. These concepts are enacted through research-creation and artworks that re-enact deep time using paper pulp and rock-derived pigments. The aim of approximating what it is like to be a rock stems from my research into consciousness. Much emotional distress can arise from the illusion of a bounded, isolated self. Though difficult to internalize without sustained meditative practice, my art practice offers a parallel path. By being-with rocks (entities that may possess consciousness without a self), I explore the possibility of dissolving the illusion of separation between self and Earth.