fieldstone

Welded Steel and Limestone

2024

Environmental activists often aim to challenge and deconstruct the dominant narratives that prioritize industrial growth over ecological balance. However, they have sometimes misdirected their focus and employed ineffective methods. In this context, a caged rock symbolizes the need to present our arguments with greater urgency. The stone represents not only the geological history of our planet—efficiently exploited and meticulously processed—but also serves as a symbol of protest.

No other object has been as widely used for causing injury and property damage.

Can we hold a stone accountable for human actions? Or does its role as a weapon or symbol depend entirely on the context in which it is wielded? The answer lies not within the stone itself but in our perception of its meaning and purpose. A stone is, at its core, a piece of the earth—a relic of time, shaped by natural forces, bearing witness to millennia of change. Yet, in human hands, it becomes a tool, a weapon, a statement.

The caging of the stone draws attention to the constraints we place upon nature when we exploit it for our purposes. It also invites reflection on the ways we restrict and direct our energies in advocating for environmental justice. Are we, like the stone in its cage, restrained by systems that commodify our resources and silence dissent? Or can we break free from these confines to build a future that values balance over profit?

This work is both an object and a narrative—a meditation on the interplay between nature and industry, passivity and action, history and progress. By presenting the stone in this way, we confront our shared responsibility to channel the potential for destruction into a force for creation.

Perhaps the question is not whether we can hold a stone accountable but whether we can hold ourselves accountable for how we choose to use it.