Before (Test for milestone) (2021) departs from the idea of the milestone as indicating both distance and a stage along a journey. In the work, however, the marker is also an experiment: a stone is encapsulated in ice and taken to a beach, where it remains exposed to the possibility of being struck by lightning.

The work stems from an attempt to produce a fulgurite, or lightning stone, from an ordinary rock—not merely as the trace of an atmospheric discharge, but as the actual transformation of matter. The expectation was that, if struck by lightning, the stone would cease to be what it was and give rise to a new mineral formation.

The block of ice keeps the stone in a provisional state, suspended between preservation and transformation. As its form slowly changes under the heat, another unpredictable transformation remains latent.

The “test” in the title refers to this condition of waiting. The milestone does not mark a completed stage, but rather the moment at which a process is set in motion: a stone faced with the possibility of becoming something else. The work presented is a pigment print from a documentary series of this experiment, capturing the ephemeral condition of the materials during this state of suspension.