Racetrack Playa is widely known for its many iconic rocks—some as big as to weigh 300kg—which move slowly over the surface of a dry lakebed, carving the ground beneath and leaving behind traces of their movement. In September 2016, Racetrack Playa was vandalized and several rocks were stolen or displaced from their original locations. My body occupied the space of a missing rock, making use of its now orphan trace. In the distance, I integrated in appearance with other surrounding stones, becoming a rock to the eyes of other visitors. After remaining still for a period of nine hours, my body lost the ability to walk, becoming more rock and less human.

For me, performing “At the Pace of the Rocks” was a means to move beyond visual and material ways of addressing issues of geologic time and new materialism in my practice. The possibility of becoming a rock or trying to feel what a rock feels—or not feel anything at all—seemed very interesting, just as the idea of slowing my pace to the one of geology. From a vital-materialist perspective, Racetrack Playa is a fascinating place. The dolomite rocks move like questioning aliveness, while their mysterious traces reveal the slowness of geological processes and the invisibility of a landscape in continuous transformation. Placing my body within this very specific context seemed to me a very poetic and powerful action, because it generated permeable relationships between the body and the environment. In that precise moment where I am perceived as a rock, or in which my entire body is numb and I have lost the ability to move, every material form operates at a same level; everything seems to collapse, becoming entangled, continuous and non-hierarchical.