Moveable Hunger Stone and Shifting Baselines Tool

During the droughts that struck Europe in 2015, many rivers dramatically receded revealing “hunger stones”. Hunger stones are so called because they only appear in times of extreme drought, when water levels in rivers are radically reduced. The stones often have messages of warning carved into them, along with dates recording when the stones have appeared. In 1904 a famous hunger stone — which has the words “Wenn Du mich siehst dann weine” (“When you see me, then weep”) carved into it — was revealed and provoked a series of newspaper articles followed by a wave of pilgrimage and tourism to visit it and other hunger stones.

Referencing larger hunger stones, these more portable objects are made from lithographic limestone and have the words “We have wept, we weep, and you will weep” embedded lithographically within them. These words are taken from another hunger stone, situated in Těchlovice, Czech Republic. One stone is a cylinder so that it can be used as a rolling matrix to lithographically print this message where needed, while the other stone is a flat stone that is light enough to be moved into place and then shifted as necessary. Though inspired by large, static hunger stones, these two stones are meant to be agile and adaptable enough to suit the continually shifting environmental baselines of our current era.