Attitudes of Stone
by Philipp Modersohn

“We meet unheard-of protagonists; unheard-of because stone, minerals, glass, slag, peat, and such are given form, expression, voice, and space to act. They are staged as actors of themselves and counteract human patterns of thought and action in subtly humorous ways. […] We are allowed here to experience a deterritorialised connectivity between matters and what matters, formation and re-formation, processes of negotiation and fresh perspectives. Something is virtually set free.”

Attitudes of Stone begins with an image sequence of Philipp Modersohn’s objects, which seem to morph into one another. These 16 protagonists stand in for materials and processes: furniture, anthropomorphism, metamorphosis, pressure, topiary, peat, photosynthesis, adaptation, infrastructures, heaps, sediments, glass, heat, concrete, vibrancy, phase transition. Subsequently, these constellations unfold in poetic and theoretical contributions by authors from a variety of fields, along with pseudoscientific diagrams and documentation of the site-specific installations. A horizontal dialogue can begin: between the different sections as well as with the contributors, humans, things, and processes alike. Meanwhile, the ink on the page fluctuates as if the printing press itself is breathing.