Alexander Sebastianus Indonesian, b. 1995
A rock and its rope, 2026
Teakwood specimen case, Photographic rope on cotton, Lithified assemblage of; shredded books, burnt furniture, hair sediments, gathered soil, fragments of heirloom batik, shattered ceramics, limestone powder, cement and other particles of froms
20 x 14 x 6 cm
'his work is a continuation of the material research developed through Tilas Waktu: Phenomenologies of Belonging (2026), in which human existence is approached as something capable of becoming sedimented within...
"his work is a continuation of the material research developed through Tilas Waktu: Phenomenologies of Belonging (2026), in which human existence is approached as something capable of becoming sedimented within matter.
Here, the megalithic and landscape-specific references of Tilas Waktu are reduced and transformed into a more speculative geological proposition. The work considers how a rock might be produced not through natural geological processes alone, but through the accumulation, fragmentation, combustion, and compression of human materials.
Shredded books, burnt furniture, hair, soil, inherited batik, broken ceramics, limestone, cement, and other remnants are brought together and lithified into a new artificial stone. Each material carries a different temporal register: the geological duration of limestone; the growth of a body represented by hair; the inherited time embedded within textile; the cultural memory contained in books and domestic objects; and the comparatively recent material histories of cement and manufactured matter. Their compression produces a body in which these otherwise incompatible timescales become indistinguishable.
I approach this process as neo-geology—a speculative practice of producing new geological matter from the residues of human existence. Rather than attempting to imitate natural stone, the work proposes an alternative stratigraphy in which cultural, bodily, domestic, and geological materials become sedimentary layers of a contemporary earth.
The rock becomes a record without a single origin. It contains traces of reading, dwelling, inheritance, consumption, breakage, labour, and bodily presence. What would ordinarily be considered waste, evidence, or personal residue is transformed into geological matter. In this process, the distinction between natural and anthropogenic material begins to collapse.
The work also continues my interest in the capacity of matter to hold memory. Rather than representing memory through imagery, memory is materially embedded within the object through the substances themselves. The resulting form can be understood as a speculative fossil: not the fossil of an extinct organism, but of a human life and its material conditions.
The specimen case and photographic rope extend this process of material archiving, while the lithified body becomes its primary record. The object exists simultaneously as specimen, archive, residue, and newly formed geological body.
Within this neo-geological framework, the rock is not evidence of a distant past. It is an attempt to imagine what the present might become when viewed from a geological future—when books, furniture, textiles, bodies, ceramics, cement, and soil are no longer understood as separate categories, but simply as layers of matter compressed together within the earth.
The work asks: what kind of geology are we currently producing? And if human existence is continually becoming sediment, what will our rocks remember?
A rock holds memories, shaped by its rope"
Here, the megalithic and landscape-specific references of Tilas Waktu are reduced and transformed into a more speculative geological proposition. The work considers how a rock might be produced not through natural geological processes alone, but through the accumulation, fragmentation, combustion, and compression of human materials.
Shredded books, burnt furniture, hair, soil, inherited batik, broken ceramics, limestone, cement, and other remnants are brought together and lithified into a new artificial stone. Each material carries a different temporal register: the geological duration of limestone; the growth of a body represented by hair; the inherited time embedded within textile; the cultural memory contained in books and domestic objects; and the comparatively recent material histories of cement and manufactured matter. Their compression produces a body in which these otherwise incompatible timescales become indistinguishable.
I approach this process as neo-geology—a speculative practice of producing new geological matter from the residues of human existence. Rather than attempting to imitate natural stone, the work proposes an alternative stratigraphy in which cultural, bodily, domestic, and geological materials become sedimentary layers of a contemporary earth.
The rock becomes a record without a single origin. It contains traces of reading, dwelling, inheritance, consumption, breakage, labour, and bodily presence. What would ordinarily be considered waste, evidence, or personal residue is transformed into geological matter. In this process, the distinction between natural and anthropogenic material begins to collapse.
The work also continues my interest in the capacity of matter to hold memory. Rather than representing memory through imagery, memory is materially embedded within the object through the substances themselves. The resulting form can be understood as a speculative fossil: not the fossil of an extinct organism, but of a human life and its material conditions.
The specimen case and photographic rope extend this process of material archiving, while the lithified body becomes its primary record. The object exists simultaneously as specimen, archive, residue, and newly formed geological body.
Within this neo-geological framework, the rock is not evidence of a distant past. It is an attempt to imagine what the present might become when viewed from a geological future—when books, furniture, textiles, bodies, ceramics, cement, and soil are no longer understood as separate categories, but simply as layers of matter compressed together within the earth.
The work asks: what kind of geology are we currently producing? And if human existence is continually becoming sediment, what will our rocks remember?
A rock holds memories, shaped by its rope"
