People are around me in the hallway again, having returned from the Goldsworthy located beside the house. They say he threw a fit during install and threw his chainsaw. It is art world gossip, but it also shakes up the Texas Chainsaw Massacre trope—a white man with an unleashed chainsaw, the chain actively rotating across the blade while hurtling through the air, is simply an agitated English sculptor who is more renowned for gently arranging dew and dust.

Or am I wrong to assume that the pursuit of petrification is individual, not collective? A reprieve from life and not, like the living Buddhas of Japan, an ongoing vital practice? The pain of mummification was endured to alleviate our own; do the petrified, in their own manner, unburden us through their actions?

In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein describes how when a crisis happens, companies infiltrate society, and the government imposes new rules or cuts. It’s sometimes more possible in the art sector to see individuals, groups, and collectives using these moments to infiltrate the structure that is in crisis or that claims the crisis.

She read the piece of paper pinned to the wall—a list of terms and principles. Anyone can petrify here. No one will be collected or labeled an artwork. People deserve access to spaces like this. Petrification is a human right.