Letter to the stones or that which does not create slime

Leandro Muniz and Maura Grimaldi

It is Sunday morning, and after weeks of greyness, it is sunny, which cheers up my plants and also
me. Even though I am saturnine, I also need solar energy. It is striking how weather events rebound
on life, from the organization of cities to people's moods. In this sense, I find it curious that you
chose to deal with stones: besides being a recurrent subject in art and literature, the various
expressions with this word, or the different approaches on this theme, show how the object
condenses different possibilities of interpretation, from psychoanalysis to studies on the formation of
the universe. Denise Ferreira da Silva says that the matter of the stars is the same as that of our
bodies.

The topic has led me to think about the particular x universal binomial, which is the basic structure of
Western thought. There is no "The Stone". Each one is the singular result of multiple material
interactions over time, and in each one different flows are condensed. Looking at them has led me to
sediment desires and actions. Thinking about the extended temporality of a stone's formation calms
me, concerning the small conflicts of life or the speed of the current state of things.

This is the third time we have worked together and I remembered the day we first met at a show I
was organizing in 2017. You commented that it was "an exhibition for people who like art". In these
processes, I admire your effort to create precise methods and understand the dynamics of the places
where your work circulates. We are talking about rocks because we like art and how it can create
connections between these different interpretations of the phenomenon I spoke about before, also
introducing the element of imagination, one of the greatest political powers of our field.

i try to recover from where the desire to work with geology as an object and method was born. i
remember wanting to understand the stone-tape theory which seemed to contain the same mystery
as the voyager golden records. i have always been blown away by it. perhaps by its loss of
spatio-temporal scale. perhaps by its capacity to impel us to a demanding task of imagining.

the stone is the possibility of refusal. the first weapon. violence and self-defense. it is hermetic to
human arrogance – as wislawa szymborska said in conversation with a stone.

but they were already present in my photographic experiments in the first years of the fine arts
course. i think they recuperated the reflection about the histories of landscapes. and to look at the
historiography of the landscape is to realize the histories of our own bodies and ways of narrating.

when I invited you, you gave me a cornerstone. I got from your mouth the term that was missing to
entangle the multitude of interests that permeated the petric universe I was looking at: polysemy.
not only because it recovered the method applied in the construction
ofthevideo-ofthetext-ofthedrawings-oftheencounters but because it let us see the degree of
construction of a word and – why not? – of things.

still on polysemy: multivocality and multitude as strategies that i associate with the construction of
the narration. this fiction carries the ballast of documentality. the dialogues in the film start from an
even larger text. written in a dramaturgical mode. but which merges different literary genres. it was
collectively built, even if the participants were not aware of the process. and also in a collector way.
since it is a gathering of fragments appropriated during two months of experiences and
conversations during an artistic residency.

it echoed in my eyes and ears that "we are talking about rocks because we like art and how it can
create connections between these different interpretations of the phenomenon." at the end. it is
because we like to narrate. and we like people. human or not.

denise was an important interlocutor during the elaboration of this film. the concept of non-locality
seems to go in one of the structuring points of this lithic narrative. perhaps because the idea of the
erratic block. the one that slides. that travels. that deforms itself in contexts. makes me connect
non-locality > erratic block > gender indetermination > linguistic transits. putting the terms in
relation. i leave here the erotic-geological glossary collected from the excavations.

If we are made of the same matter as the stars. we are also lithic.

At the exact instant I thought about you, the e-mail arrived. I was listening to Mr. Sun, which is
another of those narratives that mirror landscape and subject in constant transit. An interpersonal
subjectivity, transtemporal and in flow.

"this journey makes me connect non-locality > erratic block > gender indeterminacy > linguistic
transits" - perhaps because of the potential negativity in these concepts. "In calling for touch, I do
not intend to invent any concept. But to put into relation certain senses that seem to recover mineral
wisdom in the body ", is an idea of my friend Tarcisio Almeida. But in your work, this relation seems
to operate in another way: not by the decomposition of the definition that a concept presupposes,
but by multiple contacts between concepts from different areas. Just look at the glossary.

Yes, we are lithic. Calcium in our bones, iron in our blood, and so on. We have to escape from the
dichotomy of Western thought that sees nature as an object. Stones dance and we are stones too.
What if we think of their movement as an alternative to the frenetic consumption of things, people,
images, experiences?

Our playlist “stones, rocks, and pebbles” has songs like Geni e o Zepelim, with this poor girl stoned in
a public square; Like a rolling stone and the existential tone of people lost in the indeterminacy of the
world; Como uma pedra a rolar and the wonderful capacity of Brazilian culture to make versions; If
you hold a stone, which is an allusion to Lygia Clark's work Stone and air; Stone free; Con la misma
piedra; Solid as a rock; Pedra e areia; and, of course, Pedra que não cria limo [Stone that does not
create slime]. Histories of childhood, broken hearts, and time intertwined in a single dynamic.

Gorgo is another video you made that is genetically linked to saxa loquuntur – the stones speak... In
it, elbows are breasts, knees kiss, and a clenched fist can be a heart. It takes me a while to know
what is behind the shadow, I don't know if it is the texture of the video, the unsynced relation with
the subtitles, or that anguish that arises when we cannot classify things. Is it a rock or a camouflaged
octopus? A mineral or a piece of bacon? Doubts only multiplied in the second work… The pale
palette generates a temporal shuffle. An image that looks like a distant landscape is revealed on the
scale of the hand. In the images of stones with straight cuts, it is evident how they hold and are
landscapes. Another cut that amazes me is the reddish stone. It looks like muscles, like fat, in contrast
to the green background that accentuates this carnal feeling.

Your stones refuse, but in saxa loquuntur they are very present, unlike in Gorgo. If there are
fragments of this in that one – the hands that draw the shadow on the wall or even the process of
the track – the images of images make me think that, in your practice, there is a dilution of borders
between "research" and "product". A news report, a map, a billboard, a painting, and a display
window appear in sequence, de-hierarchized, which leads me to something you mentioned in some
conversation: desaturation.

As with so many other decisions in the work, you have opted for the negative. Talking about stones is
your way of talking about the present moment: their slow mutation does not respond to the speed
of practical life; their orbit, launches us into the great dance of time; if, materially, they must be the
most present things on Earth – in the Universe?–, their symbolic meanings allow us to deal with
multiple associations around experiences such as sexuality, psychic functioning, territorial and
political disputes. Diaspore. Diásporo. Stones with two pores, porous, diasporic, foreign. Stones are
letters.

There is also the dialogue with the geologist, among other agents that inform the video. "We make
art because we like people" and because we want to talk in a relationship of time and space that
goes beyond our logical boundaries. From a conversation with the dead – your interest in such
materials like 16mm leads to this reflection –, to the future. And we are talking. Everything is part of
the work – the way of making, the way of making it public, the way of discussing –, or better:
practice. You have also internalized dialogue as methodology.

decomposition caught my attention.

the aggregation and disintegration of stones. sedimentation is related although classified as a distinct
phenomenon. we talked about it as a method for our dialog. the text slowly built to accompany the
video. but what if we looked for the similarity between sedimentation and decomposition?

during my research I found a mineral that scientists consider groundbreaking. it is the association of
elements from the petrochemical industry with mineral sediments. from these reconstruction
processes – the fusion of layers and rotting of materials – others emerge. multicomposites.

the plasticonglomerates make me think of the sambaquis (despite being a frightening testimony of
industrial production and the predatory human form). the idea of the deposit is latent in both. even
though their relationship with the environment holds abysmal differences.

I have been privileging film materiality for some time now. it carries with it a dimension of
obsolescence and I have been reflecting on this. perhaps because this material and the technical
image invite me to think about aging. just like the stones. it is not by chance that the film ends with
the two hands exchanging a pyrite.

film materials are expensive and their time seems extended. what interests me. i am more and more
committed to this slowing down. do less. in more time. respect the time of things. especially the
thing called the body.

the footage was 16mm. the editing process was through digital devices. the survival of film in other
media overshadows a more careful thinking about the body of the image. but it gains in its
pulverization.

the music for the saxa loquuntur comes from hannes fessmann's experimentation with music and
stones. something that was already studied by his father. it is a microtonal music from marble pieces
shaped for better wave propagation. hannes gets the notes by moistening the hands and generating
friction on the surface of the instrument – it is therefore the sound that comes out of the stone.

as for the diaspore/a - it is one of the most dense and still unfinished layers. perhaps because i think
about it every day. because i talk about it every day. because i live immigration. those who immigrate
leave in search of an idea of future. but which one? you only know after you arrive and live it. "Why
are so many Brazilians leaving the country?". the profile of those who migrate is diverse. it is to
believe in building a material and political structure. it is also a possibility for some bodies. it is a
demanding process. it is to be a foreigner. it is the need to rebuild a world. there are those who have
the privilege of immigrating. there are those who have no other option but to immigrate.

this reflection remains.

it asks for the time of sedimentation.