Silvia Noronha

Master’s thesis and book: The Future of Stones – Speculation on Contaminated Matter, 2016

Themes: environmental crime; toxic mud; non-linear communication; more-than-human perspectives; posthumanism and new materialism; field work; speculative geology; deep time and material agency.

Project developed with the support of Prof. Dr. Martin Kaupenjohann
Institute of Applied Geosciences & Geochemical Laboratory, TU Berlin, Germany

Theoretical & conceptual supervision: Prof. Dr. Knut Ebeling
Institute for Aesthetics and Media Theory, Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin

Practical supervision: Prof. Dr. Zane Berzina
Textile and Surface Design Studies, Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin

This is the conclusion work for the master’s program “Material” lead by Prof. Dr. Zane Berzina and Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Christiane Sauer within the Textile and Surface Design Studies in the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin. The program explores and challenges material- based creative design practices from contemporary technological, cultural and aesthetic perspectives. This project intends to explore an experimental and process-oriented methodology rather than a product-oriented one. Therefore, it is an artistic research in its full meaning: a mode of inquiry with permeable boundaries and transdisciplinarity, open to intersubjectivity and other tools aside from the classical sciences, relying also on the humanities and critical studies; while being inevitably political, as it deals with insights placed in relation to the context, in the search for novelty in information and structural changes. The Future of Stones resulted in a series of rocks manufactured with the earth samples collected in Bento Rodrigues in different lab facilities: Weißensee University’s Ceramics workshop and at BBK Kulturwerk’s workshops. Such experiments were realized with the support from Prof. Dr. Martin Kaupenjohann, Soil Science specialist and teacher of Ecology Fields at TU Berlin and from André Bockholdt from BBK’s Workshop, specialised in Plaster and Form. The assistance in assembling information and with the soil analysis was only possible thanks to Prof. Dr. Martin Kaupenjohannand (Institute of Applied Geosciences and Geochemical Laboratory of TU Berlin) and the Mining Institute of Water Monitoring of the State Minas Gerais. And last but not least, Prof. Dr. Knut Ebeling from the Aesthetics and Media Theory Institute at Weissensee who has been the advisor on the theoretical and conceptual matters of this project. This thesis aims to specify the work process for this project, the theoretical elucubrations around a post-human geology and to describe the experiments and results of a speculative design practice, with an interest in questioning our understanding of matter, objects, human agency, media and technology, temporality and memory.

impressum

data protection