Collection
We Return To Stones
Astri Styrkestad Haukaas
We Return To Stones
Astri Styrkestad Haukaas on her series, We Return To Stones
The silence of the stone is equal to the silence of the bone; the silence before and after life. Ultimately, this is perhaps what lies in the expression "what the stones know": An immense silence that no one, not even the stone itself, can experience.
The bitter comfort, knowing that we can never satisfy our bottomless hunger for satisfaction.
A stone on the riverbed, offering an antidote. The collaborative forces of stone and water, small movements over time, altering our surroundings. Does the stone house its own knowledge? And can it be passed on?
A symbol of both life and death, and the inevitable fact that they cannot be separated. Can we accept this?
In the moment of eruption, in the mist of immense natural forces, we are powerless-- we have to take shelter. After the storm we can come out and look at what has been destroyed or maybe what it has created.
New rivers, carrying stones from higher altitudes down to where the river runs slowly, steadily. Bringing new information.
There is a logic to it. We can learn.
"We descend from the Stones
And we return to them”.
- Tor Ulven
Humans are nature. We too have landslides. We too have earthquakes. When nature rumbles, we resonate. A language with no words.
We insist on separating ourselves from nature, while establishing our existence as being superior to it - And at the same time chase bodily sensations that makes us feel connected to it and/or at home in it. Is it the contradiction we ourselves insist on?
Is it a human need to reconnect with nature after this distance we have created from it? A comfort to our losses? A tool we have created for ourselves, so we remember that we too are nature?
If I want, I can give the stone a voice, a thought. But the stone does not care. I need it more than it needs me. Returning to stones
