TRACING MATTERS OF SCALE BY WALKING WITH MINERALS

Abstract

Most practices of design are dependent on materials, and an anthropocentric way of thinking matter as mere resource ready to exploit, dominates. This text attempts to counteract that mode of thinking about matter, by walking and thinking-with stones, minerals and fossils in a disused limestone quarry in southern Sweden. The text is folding together thoughts from philosophy of science and vital materialism with insights from the lithic, spatio-temporal scales of sedimented fossil archives of the quarry and situated experiential explorations taking place there. What emerged from the learnings of the minerals, and what this text contributes with, is a proposal for a performative multi-scalar type of thinking that challenges linear, humancentric timescales, binaries and dualisms and instead opens up for more entangled understandings of, and care for, human-matter relations.