‘The Concretian Stone’ is a critical fictioning text based on a single image of a stone in the Surrealist writer and polymath Roger Caillois’ book ‘The Writing of Stones’. Caillois wrote only of stones in his personal collection, stones that he had found, lived with and handled over time in an effort to ‘understand’ their mimetic qualities. He was particularly interested in stones such as agates and jaspers that, when cracked open, appear to contain worldly images; faces, animals, landscapes, made by no artist or human hand. Through writing his stones, Caillois reaches to the edges of language and what feels known. Through investing in a ‘mineral sensorium’, he sidesteps representation and image making, moving away from assumptions that they are always made exclusively by humans. ‘The Concretian Stone’ writes into an individual septaria questioning, as Caillois did, its status as a readymade. It explores the magnetic, stacked qualities of this stone, attempting to access beyond human articulation.

The Concretian Stone was presented at 'What's the Matter: Queer Materialities and Communities of Making' at GSA in 2022. This Summer Research Symposium was part of the 'Queering of the Senses' Research Platform at the School of Fine Art. Other contributors included Scott Caruth, Jakub Ceglarz, Whiskey Chow, Nicky Coutts, Michelle Hannah and Henry Rogers. The keynote was presented by Prof Johnny Golding from the Royal College of Art. The text was then published in 'Queereal Secretions: Artistic Research as Exquisite Practice' published by Article Press and edited by Nicky Coutts and Henry Rogers. The book contains twenty contributions from GSA staff and external artists, writers and theorists.