Jenny Jih

Being-with the Stone: Archaeofictioning and the Micro-Ritual Device

What happens when you press your hand against an ancient stone at dawn, one ordinarily roped off by English Heritage, and feel something the institution cannot regulate?

Situated at the intersection of animist pagan practice, material turn, and new media art, this presentation explores how micro-ritual devices can sidestep dominant Western epistemologies. Focusing on the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge, I analyse the site as a polyrhythmic assemblage where collective human expenditure (Bataille, 1989), smartphones, and the deep-time gravity of ancient megaliths co-constitute the event. Considering ‘politics of touch,’ my research asks how more-than-human intimacy might be generated through artistic practice.

In response, I present Being-with the Stone, an interactive digital environment built from sensory fragments gathered during fieldwork: imperfect, glitched, resisting the extractive logic of the digital twin. Drawing on ‘archaeofictioning’ (O’Sullivan, 2024), the work seeks to summon alternative earthbound realities. It constellates entangled temporality: geological time, astronomical time, and the instantaneity of digital transmission into the atemporal experience that the virtual environment makes possible. Rather than operating as a technology of acceleration, the work functions as a vessel of care—a collective container (Le Guin, 1986) that holds the sensory and affective residues of ritual.

Biography

Jenny Jih is a Taiwan-born artist and researcher based in London, currently pursuing a practice-based PhD at Goldsmiths University. Her work sits at the intersection of ecology, ritual, and digital technology, with a focus on more-than-human agency and animist ways of sensing. 

She is currently conducting fieldwork on pagan seasonal rituals across the UK, crafting installations and 'sacred media' as devices for fostering relational encounters.