2026
interactive installation
interactive installation
Project was made as part of Inspiration Lab 2025/26 by Ji.Hlava International Documentary Film Festival
Photos by Lukáš Veselý, IG @lukasfoti.cz
“IF LAB: Trajectories” exhibition at Display Gallery, Prague
Synopsis:
( ) in stone, a collaborative project by Karl Kaisel, Magda Kopańska(PL/AT), and Mana Tashakorinia(IR/FI), is dedicated to the cup-marked sacrificial stones scattered throughout Estonia known as ohvrikivid. With great sensitivity, the collective proposes a kind of channeling: ways of thinking with these stones, understanding them, communicating with them, and cultivating ethical relationships grounded in reciprocity and consent across different spatio-temporalities and beyond the constraints of anthropocentrism. Karl's video installation offers one possible way of engaging with ritual in the contemporary world – rituals capable of transforming our perception of time, space, and the more-than-human world, while renewing the relationship between humans and stone as a being in its own right. Magda's installation focuses on traces of human presence and on the multiple interpretations of sacrificial stones through photography and archival materials. Mana's film reflects on the loss of our capacity to listen to nature while searching for possibilities to restore dialogue between humans and the landscape. This constellation of interconnected perspectives is complemented by a publication documenting and mediating the project's shared research trajectory – both human and more-than-human.
Stone per Hour asks what rituals we might create today to engage with stones as living, more-than-human agents rather than as remnants of the past. The project looks at the stones as technolog with agency that can open access to deep time. During Midsummer’s Eve, I spent 24 hours visiting 24 culturally significant stones across a 100-square-kilometre area around my home. At each site, I repeated the same actions: positioning my body in relation to the sun and the stone, filming at the each hour of the day, thanking the stone for colaboartion and leaving a small offering. As the day progressed, the locations became markers of time, and I found myself experiencing space and time differently, entering what I began to understand as lithic time and space.
The resulting interactive video installation consists of 24 clips, each representing one hour of the day. Their playback duration changes according to the viewer’s distance from the stones on screen: standing closer allows the viewer to spend longer with each stone, while standing further away accelerates the cycle. Ambient sounds recorded at each site accompany the images, with each transition marked by the sound of one stone striking another. The installation explores ritual as a way of making relationships with landscape and more-than-human agents tangible, and of finding forms of connection within a world that exceeds a human-centred understanding.