WITH-OUT-SOUND

with-out-sound is a poetic-visual text developed during research in the Mineralogy Collections at The Natural History Museum in London. The development of the text involved research with minerals found in igneous and metamorphic rock including: Almandine, Galena, and Chalcopyrite. The text aims to rethink minerals through the senses, moving from observational methods into more relational modes of engagement. As such, the work experiments with forms of poetic writing as a means to register unspoken affects and flows that occur during encounters with minerals. Writing with geological artefacts in an archival space is far from a silent activity, presences in the room, sounds of the museum and its associated practices permeate the space. The itinerant nature of sound becomes the writing practice, one that listens between relations and overlaps.

with-out-sound was published by SomethingOther as part of the Fifth Chapter series, On Silences & Noise in 2018. The text has been featured in essays by Jussi Parikka in Posthuman Ecologies edited by Rosi Braidotti and Simone Bignall and The Midden edited by Jenni Nurmenniemi and Tracey Warr.