One day, a chemist realizes she can hear certain atoms. As she befriends two of them, her curiosity grows : what are relationships between human beings and objects made of? What is it like to be an atom, to be extracted, exploited? What hierarchies underlie the kingdom of matter?

She takes her atom friends for a walk in an abandoned coal factory in the suburbs of Charleroi. What better place than the ruins of the first industrial revolution to allude to the fourth?

At the intersection between two worlds usually considered apart – animism and natural sciences, this fiction is an intimate encounter with the atoms, disclosing their billion unheard tales. A slide into cosmic dampness. Into a world that is enlightening when we are close to it, dark when we destroy it.

By Mathilde Schoenauer Sebag