INSIDE THE STONE: CHOREOGRAPHIES OF THE INVISIBLE

Art by Klara Kristalova

by Zuzana Malina Černohousová in 2025, The Year of Quantum Physics.

What if we had a technology advanced enough?! A perfect sensor, capable of showing life inside a stone? If we could see things hidden for a human eye, we might witness the choreography of atoms, the pulse of ancient memory, universes unfolding within its silent surface. What would we see, if we could see what a stone holds? This installation offers a quiet proposal: that within the seemingly firm and static object the whole universes are playing around. We are invited to peer not only into matter, but into memory, duration, and the invisible beauty all around us.

This site-specific installation begins with that question: “What if ….” And explores the idea that within every stone lie hidden universes not seen by a human eye - a realm of atomic motion, memory, and silent energy. Inspired by poetic imagination and quantum science, the project proposes a reversal of scale and perception: from vast skies to microscopic interiors.

For a few years, I’ve been keeping this vision for a curatorial project in my mind. The perception that within every stone many universes play around. But it was during my recent stay at Wanås Konst, while walking through its landscape of forest, stone barns, and sculpture park surrounded by a stone wall, that the vision anchored itself. In the local bookstore I discovered the rare and quietly powerful book 'Hur man blir en sten och andra sånger från svinskogen' ('How to Become a Stone and Other Songs from the Pig Forest') written by Martina Lowden and illustrated by Klara Kristalova. Her drawings and sculptures speak with an uncanny tenderness, full of transformation and shadow. I later learned that Kristalova was born in Czechoslovakia, my own homeland, in 1967, and fled with her family to Sweden in 1968, just before the Soviet-led invasion. Her visual world, so delicate and strange, feels like a mirror to something I carry within me: the tension between stillness and chaos, freedom and desire for protection, innocence and knowledge.

Inspiration by Klara Kristalova and Tom Price (generated by Runway)

The imagined stone at the center of this work may well be the local Skåne diabase - a dark, dense volcanic rock formed over a billion years ago. Commonly referred to as black granite, it is quarried throughout the region and used in both monumental sculpture and infrastructure. By focusing on this specific stone, the installation anchors its cosmic vision in the material and geological identity of Skåne itself.  It is a poetic reversal. The densest and darkest local material becomes a metaphor for inner light, movement, and the invisible structures of life.

I also find endless inspiration in the teachings of Diamond Way Buddhism - so called Dharma - teachings about mind, which can be considered as a kind of a science about mind - observing and studying phenomena from the perspective of inner perceptions and insights. According to this teachings “every atom vibrates with joy and is kept together by love”. Stones are heavy. But they are also space, vibration, and interdependence.

Now, in 2025 declared the Year of Quantum Physics, which on contrary to Dharma teachings observes and studies phenomena from the outside perception - the timing feels right to begin work on this project.

I imagine a monumental vertical photography print, or the image projected on the screen - either a video or a high-resolution photo-montage unfurling from the upper horizon of the roof all the way down over the grass till disappearing in the road, it will visually continue the sky downward into the ground, as if we were falling through air into the inner cosmos of a stone …

The motif can be also in a form and effect of watercolor paint, melting down from the sky into the ground. The form and expression of the theme would be a matter of artists invited for the project.

From the beams of the Wanås barn, a big scale projection screen would be suspended, unfurling from the ceiling all the way to the floor. A looped video (5–10 mins) projected on the screen slowly gradually zooming into the interior of a stone, revealing its imagined inner life.

Visitors will be invited to lie down beneath it. Looking up, they’ll watch a slow, meditative descent into textures, vibrations, and imagined microscopic choreography — a visual journey into universes inside of the stone ….

Microscopic photography of mineral textures and crystals- Digital animation or simulation of atomic motion and energy fields- AI-enhanced visual dreaming, blending geological and galactic forms- Sound design based on frequencies from minerals and field recordings

It will be a matter of the artists involved and can vary from pure digital approach to multimedia combination of technics and approaches.

The sustainability of usage of granite powder waste can be studied and integrated into the project too.

Call for Artists and Scientists just in case

I am curious looking for collaborators in the fields of:

- Minerals, stones, granite powders based fine art (painting, sculpturing, multimedia)

- Microscopic and macro photography - Quantum physics visualization and science - art Animation, VFX, or AIdriven video synthesis Sound design and environmental audio

Artistic Research at Tom Price Studio, Mallorca

My Thanks to Tom Price and Previous Culture Moves Europe Project Experience

I have to mention here that my approach and seeing the things as I do was also developed by receiving a new experience during  my art residency in Porto Christo, Mallorca in winter 2024, where I was doing a research for the curatorial exhibition project with the British Artist Tom Price. He provided me with first-hand practical knowledge and experience of how his works are made and where he source his materials. I was participating in the fabrication of several pieces, which gave me a much deeper insight into his practice and working methodologies. So the fact, that through this thought line of “stone - inside of the stone - Klara Kristalova - black granite as a local source - and further” this proposal has immerged, is somehow continuation of my gained experiences nurtured strongly by my resent work with Tom Price too. So the credit falls to him being open and generous to me same as to inspiration by Wanås Konst and my stay here.