TALKING WITH STONES - Burned soil, ironoxid and the name of things

Listening to Stones: A Somatic and Geological Inquiry into Lithic Temporalities

Abstract

This research unfolded into currently four inquiries under the title:Liquid Stones and shapeshifting time/ Ironoxid in the blood /  burned soil and the name of things/ Current Futures and Vibrant Bodies.

four invitations into the layered temporalities of stone. Each session explored within a collective un-learning and critical thinking and sensing situation with the community of LIOS labs unfolded as an experiment for shifting perception and stepping into a practice of attunement. The sessions moved between the scientific and the somatic, between geological observation and embodied listening, between knowing and unknowing.

A framework emerged—not as a fixed methodology but as a porous system of inquiry, shaped by the act of sensing itself. We explored how stones communicate, not in words, but through weight, texture, resistance, and change. We questioned what it means to hold a stone, and to be held in return. We traced the slow, near-imperceptible movements of lithic time, allowing erosion to become a kind of gesture, a dance written in millennia.

By engaging both scientific analysis and sensorial practice, this research dissolves the boundary between observer and observed. It invites a different kind of knowledge production—one that does not seek to extract information from stone but to listen for what is already there.
This research investigates the reciprocal relationship between the human body and stones, positioning lithic matter as both an archive of deep time and an active participant in perception. Utilizing a transdisciplinary framework that merges geoscience, deep ecology, and somatic methodologies, this study explores how stones store, transmit, and resist knowledge. Through embodied interactions, we examine the thresholds between material stability and transformation, approaching stone not merely as inert matter but as an agent in shaping human sensory and cognitive processes.

Introduction
Stones exist at the periphery of human temporality—vast, slow-moving bodies that outlast perception. Their presence is often perceived as static, yet their molecular structures are in perpetual flux, shifting under pressure, erosion, and time. This research asks: How do stones shape our ways of knowing? What knowledge emerges when we engage with lithic matter through somatic perception rather than detached observation?

By drawing from geophysical theories of deep time (Haraway, 2016; Bjornerud, 2018) and entanglements between nonhuman and human matter (Barad, 2007), this study positions stone as a site of epistemological exchange. Methodologically, it incorporates elements of performative inquiry, fieldwork in desert ecologies, and somatic engagement to bridge scientific and embodied ways of knowing.

Methodology
The research follows a multi-modal approach:

• Geological Analysis: Observing sedimentation patterns, weathering processes, and mineral compositions across distinct landscapes (Atacama, Tabernas, Almería).

• Somatic Fieldwork: A series of embodied experiments including extended contact with stones, pressure-based touch, weight transfer, and postural attunement to lithic formations.

• Phenomenological Documentation: Writing sessions capturing the experience of listening to stone through different sensory modalities—temperature shifts, textural impressions, resonance.

• Time-Based Observations: Tracking erosion and disintegration over days, weeks, and imagined millennia, inviting an expanded temporality into perception.

Findings and Discussion

1. Stone as Archive
   Stones hold traces of their past encounters—wind-carved surfaces, water-smoothed edges, fractures from tectonic shifts. These are read not only through scientific analysis but through the body's capacity to receive and register time differently. A fingertip tracing a fossilized ripple registers a past oceanic movement, long gone yet still present in form.

2. Reciprocal Contact
   The notion of "holding and being held" emerges as central to this research. A stone's weight against the palm, the resistance of a boulder against a resting spine—these encounters reveal a bidirectional exchange where both body and stone are shaped by contact. Here, knowledge is not extracted but co-emerged in the meeting of surfaces.

3. Lithic Time and Erosion as Gesture
   Erosion becomes an extended gesture, a slow undoing that mirrors bodily dissolution. Unlike human movement, which is driven by muscular contractions and kinetic impulses, lithic movement unfolds in an almost imperceptible slowness—an exhalation stretched over millennia.

4. Language of Stone
   Stones resist inscription, yet they speak through their arrangement, their fractures, their mineral alignments. The research suggests that rather than imposing language upon stone, we must listen for the subtle syntax already embedded within them—their capacity to shape thought beyond verbal articulation.

Conclusion
This study proposes that stones are more than passive geological entities; they are temporal thresholds, sensorial collaborators, and active participants in knowledge production. By integrating geoscientific insights with somatic inquiry, we can develop a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which lithic matter informs human perception and ecological awareness. Further research should explore how different cultural frameworks approach lithic knowing, particularly in Indigenous and non-Western epistemologies, to deepen our engagement with stones as sites of relationality rather than extraction.

References

• Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press.

• Bjornerud, M. (2018). Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World. Princeton University Press.

• Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.