This work is an interactive game of mahjong played with rocks collected from all over the world over many years. The set contains 144 pieces of rock tiles, and is played on a table bedded in living moss, which must be watered daily. Beneath it, a family of roly-polies tends its own quiet economy.

To play is to be slowed. The player draws a tile, holding it and contemplating its weight/history/color/temperature. The game invites you to participate in a sensorial shift in temporal register.


Chakrabarty calls geological time abyssal for humans, something beyond imagination, resistant to our stories of progress and justice. I don’t believe that is true. I think embodied temporality is a muscle we can all practice.  

Mahjong is a form with deep roots in pattern and reading, a game that has generations of history. Played here with stones that predate every player by millions of years, it becomes a practice of time squatting: inhabiting a temporality that is not ours to own. The moss grows and dies at its own pace. The roly-polies are busy beneath. The rocks do not remember being picked up.

This game is a playful reminder that as humanity has become a geological force perhaps we should be thinking of progress with deep time in mind.