Zden Brungot Svíteková & Napsugár Trömböczky on Vigil Custody: What Can Stones Teach Us About Humanity?

Being with – the mystery of contact – so simple, yet so substantial. Dance may initiate us into this mystery, and the substantial purpose of art may be relationship. What will the stone carry away from it? And what about us – when we carry a stone for a while – might we learn something of humanity from it? wonder the makers of Vigil Custody. After all, the stones patiently carry us.

A small part of this journey with Vigil Custody can also be experienced by audiences at this year’s KoresponDance Festival. Viewers can join the audience of stones on the artistic walk Walk the Steps of Stones around the Žďár nad Sázavou Estate. But the journey began earlier – during a residency in Žďár nad Sázavou, after which this conversation took place…

Working Together Without Dominance

When arriving at the ART KLASTRY residency with Vigil Custody, did you have any working hypothesis you hoped to explore?

Napsugár: We arrived with a desire to understand how we could work together on a new project – that’s always a challenge in a non-horizontal, non-hierarchical format. There was a lot of framing around how to do this efficiently, and for me, that became one of the most inspiring aspects. 

It feels unrelated to the topic – but actually, it is. Reflecting on collaboration, shifting our approach, and trying to respect others’ ideas without falling into the ineffectiveness of politeness –⁠ all of that shaped the way we worked. It’s the same principle how we work with landscape and audience: collaborating without dominating or using them for our own purpose.

Zden: Our residency journal reflects on the fact that a huge part of the process has been about being together and working collaboratively, exploring a non-hierarchical approach. While the overall structure aspires to horizontality, in practice –⁠ shaped by roles, relationships, and pre-existing working agreements – certain responsibilities and forms of accountability do fall to specific members, influenced by parallel work commitments, individual capacities, and how work is distributed within the group. There’s the artistic work itself, and then the deeper question: how do I practise that work? It’s about living what I’m preaching.These reflections are echoed in the title – “vigil” speaks to being vigilant and attentive. “Custody” evokes care, stewardship, presence, influence, and shaping and it equally calls for attentiveness and the capacity to listen.

These terms carry additional connotations as well. “Vigil” vibrates with vigilance and the military security system, such as Le Plan Vigipirate – France’s national anti-terrorism alert plan aimed at protecting public safety through heightened surveillance and preventive measures. Meanwhile, “custody” also draws from legal and prison vocabulary, referring to the state of being detained, confined, or under supervision, often by law enforcement or correctional authorities. This layered meaning adds complexity to how I think about custody as a mode of relation. It’s an ongoing reflection since our time in Žďár.

The stone won’t break from fear – but maybe I will. In connection, there’s also otherness. We’re not the same but still connected. Somehow, I’m learning to feel the pressure of what it means to be human, and to become material.

The stone won’t break from fear – but maybe I will. In connection, there’s also otherness. We’re not the same but still connected. Somehow, I’m learning to feel the pressure of what it means to be human, and to become material.

Becoming Material

You want to be vigilant of the geosphere. In Easter Christian tradition, vigil means to be awake with Jesus suffering. There’s something intimate, affectious. What more specific state of mind do you aim for, and what somatic or choreographic practices lead you there?

Zden: Just being there, in direct and purely physical contact, moving with Earth and rock, puts me in a state where I feel part of them. We practise directly among the rocky bodies fine-tuning the senses and the whole way of relating and understanding. Tidalectics (ed. Stephanie Hessler), which explores an oceanic nations worldview through essays and artistic projects that rethink our relationship with the hydrosphere. It brings together diverse voices from disciplines like anthropology, maritime history, and literature, alongside innovative artworks that highlight the deep connections between art, environment, and oceanic knowledge.

The second is Shawn Wilson’s Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods, which explores a relational paradigm for research, particularly within the context of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives. Many of the ideas feel familiar to me, yet they are expressed through a different lens, anchored in a specific cultural context – with a clarity that resonates. What especially drew my curiosity was the emphasis on building, maintaining, and being accountable to relationships – the flip side of the coin when we speak of rights, agency, and autonomy, yet often overlook the responsibilities, ethics, and forms of accountability that accompany them. 

With the third, I returned to the writings of American philosopher and anthropologist David Abram – this time in his book Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. Through his attention to the “ecology of language,” he reflects on how language shapes our ways of being and behaving. Just reading him makes the world feel more alive; things cease to be mere objects to exploit and instead enter into a sense of reciprocity.

Napsugár: On one hand, there’s theory including texts on geology – but you really need a direct connection such as revisiting the construction sites, knowing the stones were placed there in the 13th century, then uncovered again. We brought stones from the hill, walked with them, felt their history – first intuitively, then through research. Even simply placing them in a rehearsal room does something… Their weight, age, resilience, the struggle of manipulating them –⁠ even small ones makes you struggle.

Somatic attention is often associated with stillness or calmness. But like in yoga, it’s the physical challenge, holding positions, that quiets the mind. I once spent two hours learning to lasso a stone. I was tired and my body remembered the movements, I felt fragile as having a structured body. 

We also worked with sound – the stone falling apart. Material truth, its physicality, the risk of hanging it above our heads. The stone won’t break from fear – but maybe I will. In connection, there’s also otherness. We’re not the same but still connected.

Zden: After the sharing at the end of the April residency, I sat by the fountain and felt an intense sense of kinship. There was the stone, and there was my body – equal in presence, just different in texture, structure, and history. This closeness came from being so physically in touch with the rock’s materiality. It’s hard to put into words – definitely not some New Age blah blah. It was a deeply physical experience –⁠ sitting on the stone, being on the same level with it.

I had a similar feeling when I was in Greenland, walking the same path again and again. At a certain point, a sense of familiarity – a kinship emerged. In Shawn Wilson’s book, I came across the idea that “the relation is the important thing, not the thing itself.” It reminded me of the webs and threads we worked with⁠ as if the relation was already there, already written, already articulated. In a conversation with a colleague who works with an Indigenous artist, I came to understand that for many Indigenous peoples, the relationship to the land is not abstract or symbolic – it is lived daily, embedded in everyday practice. We might have had this once, perhaps still carry traces of it, but it has been profoundly reshaped by political and economic systems and shifting paradigms.

Napsugár: We’re trying to rediscover something but even without an inherited practice like that of Indigenous peoples: the body is nature. They don’t need to be brought together – we need to unlearn the distinction between them.

We tried to experience “stoneness” – sensing how stones move, imagining their choreographies, the logic of how they fold over time. Yet we don’t have to fold to be folded. I age. Time transforms me. I wrinkle. I dry out. I bleed when I’m cut. My body is already a landscape. It’s not my doing – nor the stone’s. 

Zden: I wonder what if we could sense the small changes in the landscape of our bodies, day by day? Not by watching ourselves in the mirror, but by sensing, by knowing. The wrinkles, the subtle shifts – how time works on us, just as it does on geological bodies, through both internal and external forces.

Napsugár: If I want anything, it’s awareness. Awareness of impermanence and permanence. The relief of being insignificant – yet part of something vast. I’m learning to let go of the pressure to be extraordinary – and just become material.

Landmarks and Layers of Žďár

Was there something particular about the Žďár landscape that stood out to you?

Zden: There’s a quarry next to the castle, and going there meant encountering those bodies at their full scale – exposed and being exploited. There was the sensorial experience: what is sensed, touched, and felt. Then the visual input: the sight of distinct layers, of other rocky bodies embedded within the rock, or a massive vein cutting through it. And also knowledge: the human interpretation of what geology has uncovered about this place. A story of profound alteration and resilience – kinesthetic, chemical, and mechanical, reaching down to the cellular, in the case of the rock to the crystalline level. A story of being born as one thing, then transformed –⁠ through collisions, contact with intruders, burial, uplift, exposure, and erasure – into something else. Engaging with the rock both physically and cognitively –⁠ it was a convergence of sensation and understanding. All of this cultivates a deep sensitivity to the other.

Napsugár: What stood out to me was how visible the human desire to shape the landscape is – in the quarry, the artificial lakes, the stones forming the castle’s foundation. Mining has left its traces. The land reveals deep ties to human history. Is this a form of harm, or a form of collaboration? 

Even today, on the construction site, migrant workers are present –⁠ taking jobs the locals no longer want. The stones carry these stories too. On the walls, I noticed scratched drawings – simple doodles left by workers, reminding me of cave art. And then there’s the fact that Žďár lies on a border between Moravia and Bohemia. You can find it marked on every historical map. I started to wonder when does a border serve to connect, and when does it divide?

Zden: Local forestry experts spoke of caring for the forest as both economy and stewardship. Then it struck me: you can grow a forest, but you can’t grow a rock. Once extracted, it’s gone. Although researchers have been developing methods of injecting CO₂-rich solutions into icelandic basalt rock, where the gas mineralizes into stable carbonate stone within two years. Maybe one day humans will be able to “grow” rocks – or maybe, if I sat long enough on a pile of sand, I’d eventually hatch a sandstone…

Stones are also made in our bodies –⁠ on teeth…

Zden: Like bones, bladder stones. Actually, I think that’s a mineral, not really a stone. An iceberg is technically also a stone. Because it has a monocrystalline structure, and it’s solid. 

Working with Scientists –⁠ Poetry of Geology

We’re now moving into the theme of interdisciplinarity –⁠ how different scientific perspectives shaped your perception of the place. Can you recall a specific encounter that changed how you see the site?

Napsugár: Almost every interaction has done that in some way. For example, talking with a construction worker who expressed a nostalgic passion for historical buildings and their aesthetics and atmosphere. You wouldn’t necessarily assume that someone who just practically works there would have such a connection.

There’s also the invisible layer of science and practicality: mapping, measuring, sonography, spectral analysis, or precise monitoring of subterranean processes. Such tools let you see also inside the walls, much like geology reveals the hidden mass beneath the surface… Or a geologist explains to you the geological folds and how to read maps.

Zden: It often works like an echo – something I hear stays with me and then hits me like a bang a few days later. For example, that thought “you cannot grow a mountain” was a seed planted during a forestry visit and later harvested while talking on the phone with a geologist. Every small encounter shifts something. Like when, on a short excursion, a representative from the environmental agency walked with me and explained how exceptional it is to find certain species growing side by side – that, too, changed my sense of place.

Napsugár: When we talk about interdisciplinarity, there’s a beautiful tension between the precision of science and the poetry of sensing. We explore the poetry embedded in scientific texts – especially in geology. Many researchers write with deep empathy, curiosity, and personal passion. Even when the tone is neutral, the wording can be moving, resembling a philosophical lament inspired by the landscape.

Zden: And what if we perceived geological writers as artists? They imagine landscapes that no longer exist, much like novelists imagine characters…

Napsugár: Exactly. It’s about breaking that border. There’s passion in those texts. They try to understand what the land is telling us⁠ using all their tools and language. And that language can really resonate.

Zden: I felt that strongly in relation to the work of William E. Glassley and his book A Wilder Time: Notes from a Geologist at the Edge of the Greenland Ice. Although I never met him, when I learned that he had passed away in 2023, I was unexpectedly moved to tears. He bridged two worlds – the scientific and the poetic. His writing, philosophical and ethical in tone, inspires a language that deepens sensitivity to landscapes and places. David Abram also reflects on how technical, objective language has distanced us from nature. And yet one can still find poetry within those very texts, or at least seek it out.

Have you adopted any scientific methods into your artistic practice – a rigorous way of evidencing, perhaps? And on the flip side, do you feel you’ve influenced the experts you worked with?

Zden: Engaging with research or scientific thinking seeps into both the body and mindset. Choreographer Jean-Christophe Paré once explained the methodology behind how artists work, and a scientist in the audience responded, “We do the same – except we always check whether what we’re doing is actually what we think we’re doing.”

Napsugár: Actually, we did that a lot. Constantly asking: is this doing what we want it to do?

Zden: After the residency, I wondered about remote sensing methods like scanning ocean floors and sending drones to explore volcanoes. Thanks to these technologies, you don’t always have to be physically present at the site. This made me wonder: how can remote sensing be embodied? Field geologists and mappers often insist on in-person, on-site investigations – sometimes even a difference of twenty meters matters. Remote sensing could be seen as an extension of the body, or as an augmented form of perception. And then there’s the philosophical angle: Karen Barad would argue that, in quantum physics, there is no such thing as contact.

It’s like your stone-on-rope experiments. That’s also a kind of remote sensing. Let’s talk about your theoretical frameworks more… Or would you prefer to focus on participation of audiences you’d like to engage?

Napsugár: Theory is an important aspect alongside participation. We often accumulate knowledge filtered through academic validation, predominantly from male researchers. Yet, actual scientific practice can be surprisingly simple –⁠ like staying silent and letting your body’s weight connect with something.

In the final sharing, we aimed to merge these approaches: instead of giving instructions, we gently shaped the space, inviting people to sit on the cold floor, for example. Our goal was to awaken somatic awareness without telling anyone what to feel, encouraging them to notice sensations, sounds, and their own bodies.

Interestingly, many participants’ feedback didn’t even mention the performers – only the stones and their sounds. It made us wonder: did we succeed in shifting attention away from the human? That’s something we’re curious about – how to de-center the anthropocentric gaze.

Maybe one day humans will be able to “grow” rocks – or maybe, if I sat long enough on a pile of sand, I’d eventually hatch a sandstone…

Maybe one day humans will be able to “grow” rocks – or maybe, if I sat long enough on a pile of sand, I’d eventually hatch a sandstone…

With Community of Stones and Spectators

So you aim for anti-anthropocentric art. Practically, how will the local community be involved?

Napsugár: We’d like to dissolve the distinction between facilitator, performer and audience. We’re also questioning whether we can shift from offering open-ended invitations to making clear statements. Can we say: this way of seeing is meaningful, and we believe it might help you? 

Zden: Whenever we’re asked what community we want to work with, we usually default to humans – researchers, map-makers, experts connected to the stones. We also considered lecturers and tour guides at the castle. But I also wonder: what about working with the community of rocks here? That’s my community!

This is related to anthropomorphising the stones, maybe stemming from anthropocentric approach… Do you feel sorry for stones used in architecture? A free rock versus one “abused” to build a monastery by Santini? Is there any emotion for stones you touch?

Napsugár: I wrote a text from the stone’s perspective, glad the roof is gone so the rain can touch it once again. Yet I imagine monks carrying stones by hand – there’s care in that act. I live in a stone house, an old building made from local resources, like ants or birds using what they find. But, for example, not only Czechia may soon run out of sand, and there’s a global transfer of materials – from sea bottoms to skyscrapers and various construction sites. That scale feels overwhelming, even exploitative. Technology might become organic to evolution, but the vast scale of extraction and movement is hard to perceive as natural.

Zden: This is about ethics and even morals. Ethics seem inherent to humans – perhaps stones have their own ethics too, but I can’t quite grasp it. 

Napsugár: Maybe ethics arise naturally from the scale of impact one can have. Animals maintain balance unconsciously – their impact is measured and precise. But with humans, we seem to be drifting away from that.

Your ecological and ethical impact matches the dramaturgy of the KoresponDance festival 2025 where you present your work in progress. Tell me, what will be the final form of the project? A performance, installation, publication?

Napsugár: Maybe all of them. One part of Vigil Custody will take the form of geo-poetry – short fragments or geological descriptions placed in the landscape or directly on bodies. We’ve experimented with writing on mushrooms, for instance. It’s a kind of miniature land art – sometimes like a sculpture, other times an empty space shaped by words. Alongside this, we also want to keep exploring the materiality of bodies and ropes.

Zden: At one point, we imagined a kind of geo-retreat – intentionally exaggerating neo-spiritual aesthetics to search for meaning. That’s when we realised how easily the language of interconnectedness can be both illuminating and overused.

Napsugár: Above all, I think the work will be a complex participatory performance. That’s the language we speak best.

Dance and theatre are the most anthropomorphic of arts – which is paradoxical… and perhaps that’s precisely why they have the power to invite us to undo our anthropocentrism.

Napsugár: That’s where we often return to Oskar Hansen’s idea of “open form.” A quote we keep coming back to says: “Aid the individual to find himself in the collective, to make him indispensable in the creation of his own surroundings.”

We see this as a kind of extended choreography – choreographic practice that goes beyond the body, beyond dance. It encompasses objects, sounds, and spatial relationships. It includes trees swaying in the wind, the slow unfolding of geological processes, the rhythms and movements that exceed our perception. A choreography that is always happening, that lies beyond what we can see..

Zden: A choreography as a still image. When I think of geology, I don’t imagine a timeline of events – I imagine depth, like looking into a cross-section of time. That change in perception also changes how I experience my own body. We have also thought about the status of information.

For example, I have a photograph of a geologist lying, I call it dancing, on a rock. And knowing that this person is a geologist changes the way I read the image. I see a body in dialogue with the landscape, shaped by and full of geological knowledge. The body doesn’t just express something – it listens, absorbs, and responds with full awareness to the presence of stone and its deep history.

Would you want geologists to be involved in your performance?

Zden: It’s a poetic image…

I hope we’ll meet in person soon –⁠ anthropocentrically, at KoresponDance.

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Ostružina (Zden Brungot Svíteková) & SVUNG Research Group (Luca Borsos, Napsugár Trömböczky): Walk with the Stones (Kráčej kroky kamenů)

KoresponDance 2025
11.–13. 7. 2025 | Ždár na Sázavou