Amelia Barikin

Sound Fossils and Arche-Fossils: Towards a Mineral Ontology of Contemporary Art

As a material index of acoustic activity, the term 'sound fossil' has gained currency in the field of contemporary art both as a means of accounting for the appearance of the past in the present, and as an embodiment of cosmic time. Drawing upon audible and not so audible projects by Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson and Laurent Grasso, this enquiry begins with Roger Callois' musings on the writings of stones, detours through the accidental discovery of the the sonic record of the Big Bang in 1964, and culminates in a consideration of the relationship between sound fossils and 'arche-fossils' (Meillassoux) to sketch out the significance of mineral ontologies to contemporary artistic production.

Documentation