Wait-less Weight

The project discusses the politics of matter — what it carries, its history, agency, labour — through two artists Jonah Hoffman; a painter working with natural pigment and Gabriele Risso; a sculptor currently working in stone.

Concept

Can culture ever be free? What is the hidden cost of a material? What is the cost of a stone? What is the weight of a colour? How do we deﬁne truth, and why do we need to deﬁne what is beautiful?

“What I wanted was a timely and weightless way of expression.”

- Isamu Noguchi

When artist Jonah Hoffman experienced the troubling torment of Cobalt Mining in Congo, he was faced head on with a canvas of cobalt blue, a material mined unethically. The artist acknowledges his privilege to sit graciously facing a canvas, using paint from a white tube and dark history – a history wherein cobalt has been a strategic mineral; fuelling a cynical global power competition between the US and China, rendering the labourers in its supply chain as disposable resources. He situates himself as someone “positioned in this Network as an American consumer, art producer, and voter, my actions feed back into this network, simultaneously reinforcing and protesting against the violence generated.” The question remains, how far down the rabbit hole can you go? Afterall, this material pulses through the batteries and devices of our daily lives, can you really run away from it? How real is individual agency?

Across the other side of the city, in his studio, Gabriele Risso works in a state of flux contemplating what it means to ﬁnd form in a stone. Risso, an Italian artist now residing and practicing in London, is faced with a different dilemma, as he passes the glistening white marble slabs of stone in the courtyard of his shared studios, he wonders: how many possibilities can grow from the organic action of subtraction? How many possibilities of life reside inside of the depth of a slab of stone yet to be cut. Choosing the language of material to explore the realities of making, he navigates an intuitive and physical relationship negotiated through constraints. Operating within the tension of intentionality, responsibility and practical conditions. Allowing the native 'thing-power'¹ of his immediate environment to inform both his relationship with sculpting and the beautiful diversity of material native to each place.

When we consider our agency and power to be part of an assemblage², the focus may shift from a human locus to a network of actors, each with their own agency, responsibility and power. Considering multidimensionality of what could be seen as two-dimensional, we may begin to dig deeper instead of scratching surface level, into how our decisions could become responses to objects, reactions rather than actant actions, and therefore, considering what is often neglected, unheard or unseen, as part of a network of decisions. As Gabriele Risso intuitively visualises the invisible endless dimensions and dissections of a stone, or Jonah Hoffman intentionally paints with cobalt as he learns the meaning of using this pigment willingly to paint or unwillingly in our daily devices. Does the beauty then of these creations change? Can the truth of our consumerism shift to become a reality of mindful and gentle care for objects and agency? Does the authenticity of what is visible overpower the truth of spectatorship?

In their respective studios, both artists are not just making ethical or intuitive choices, but entering into a profound dialogue with the vibrant, and often troubling, world of things. They engage in what Heidegger would describe as ‘setting forth the Earth’³ - allowing the raw, self-secluding nature of their materials to emerge and guide their work, while simultaneously 'setting up a World' that reveals the complex networks of meaning, power, and history these materials carry.

Therefore, this research does not merely explore art as object, but convenes a session of consideration for the assemblage and our place within it. We invite you to step into this assemblage, to bear witness to the profound and often difficult dialogues between an artist and their choice of material. Here, the politics of matter are not a theoretical concept, but a tangible reality—rendered visible, audible, and ultimately, undeniable.

Key Concerns and Questions

1. Representation & Agency: Who speaks for the non-human?

How does the concept of an “Actor Network”⁴ challenge anthropocentric views within the art world?
When we as individuals navigate systems of power, how does our autonomy become active? How do we make space for the autonomy of material matter around us?
How can we implement and perceive ‘care’ as a practice of ‘relationality’ that situates humans within their broader assemblage or ecological and communal contexts?

2. The Politics of Seeing: Frames and Power

How does the concept of the "imperial shutter"⁵ — as a mechanism of division and orchestrated violence — reshape our understanding of the politics of seeing versus being seen?
In what ways does the power to watch differ from the desire to be seen? How can agency define our experiences of knowledge and meaning making?
Can culture ever be “free” when it is secretly funded by a state intelligence agency? (Referencing "Who Paid the Piper?"⁶)

3. Earth & World: The Philosophical Ground

In what ways can exploring the concept of “Earth” as described by Heidegger provide critical insights into human-nature relationships and eco-conscious practices?
How does space become a site where the politics of knowledge are negotiated, resisted, or reinforced?
Can decentralisation serve as a mechanism to resist intrusion and bring forth a pragmatic engagement with our resources and objects?

Contribution

Reach Out

Wait-less Weight is a conversation still in progress, and it grows through the people who take part. If you have knowledge, questions or stories to share, we would like to hear from you. To get involved or start a conversation, please email us!

Literature & Research References

Azoulay, Ariella Aisha. 2019. Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. London: Verso.
Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Heidegger, Martin. 1950. "The Origin of the Work of Art." In Holzwege, 1–74. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Hill, Layla-Roxanne, and Francesca Sobande. 2025. Look, Don't Touch: Reflections on the Freedom to Feel. Edinburgh: 404 Ink / Inklings.
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1991. "The Parliament of Things." In Nous n'avons jamais été modernes: Essai d'anthropologie symétrique, 142–155. Paris: La Découverte.
Saunders, Frances Stonor. 1999. Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War. London: Granta Books. (Published in the US as The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. New York: The New Press, 2000.)
Steyerl, Hito. 2013. How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File. Video, 14 min. Tate / YouTube.

Definitions of key terms

¹ "Thing-power" is a concept developed by political theorist Jane Bennett to describe the active, lively capacity of inanimate objects to produce effects, act independently, and influence human lives.

² Assemblage Theory is a philosophical framework Jane Bennett uses in Vibrant Matter: a Political Ecology of Things. It challenges the idea that events have neat, single causes. Instead, it argues that things — events, social formations, cities, ecosystems — arise from the interaction of many heterogeneous elements that are not organised in a hierarchy.

³‘Earth’ is the ungrounded, self-secluding ground from which this world emerges. It represents the raw, material presence of things (stone, pigment, sound) that simultaneously supports meaning and, in its stubborn opacity, resists full conceptualisation & mastery.

⁴Actor Network Theory (ANT) initially emerged as an approach to the study of science and scientific activity in Latour and Woolgar’s Laboratory Life (1979) and then in Latour’s Science in Action (1987). ANT redefines agency as distributed and emergent rather than exclusively human.

⁵The “imperial shutter” is a metaphor introduced by Ariella Azoulay in Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. It is the conceptual mechanism – the ingrained habit, the institutional practice, the political grammar – that actively separates, divides, and frames reality to produce and sustain imperial power.

⁶Frances Saunders in Who Paid the Piper documents the CIA's covert funding of Western intellectuals and artists during the Cold War symbolising the premise of "freedom of expression" becomes self-undermining when the state is secretly bankrolling the voices championing it.