In her book “Vibrant Matter: Political Ecology of Things”, Jane Bennet describes thing-power as “strange ability” of things and items “to exceed their status [...] and to manifest traces of independence or aliveness”. Sometimes, the presence of certain objects in one spacetime becomes so intense that we start feeling that they have their own life and own way of acting that has nothing to do with our needs and intentions. I would like to link this state of perception of the surroundings with the notion of a soul of things and to investigate ways of its revealing within a daily life context. An important part of it is exploring my personal relation to daily objects and relations of other people.

When I think of a soul I think of insight of things, of their materiality, composition, history and a background. I do also think about the performativity and creative capacity of the matter, its ability to act, sound, change in time, cause emotions and feelings. For the last few years I have been interested in the idea of animating non-human objects without anthropomorphizing them, first technically (e.g. by applying physical force) and then also conceptually. By conceptual animation I mean providing conditions when inanimate objects start performing in the imagination of people around them. They get alive through the narratives they are bringing, through their being next to each other, through their differences and similarities.