Stolling, to stoll
The English language uses terms such as solidifying, freezing, coagulating, congealing, curing, and setting to refer to specific material processes of “solidification.” What English lacks is an overarching concept that covers the many material and immaterial processes involved in becoming “solid,” and therefore lacks a vocabulary for the steps, transitions, and phases within these processes. This absence is particularly limiting in the context of the metaphysical philosophies of Simondon and Deleuze, where transitions between potential and formation are central.We introduce the verb "to stoll" and the noun "stolling" into English, inspired by the Dutch verb "stollen" and noun "stolling", as new overarching terms for these formative transitions.In Dutch, however, stollen and stolling have gradually shifted toward the meaning of a final, completed state – gestold, something already solidified – rather than the processual, phase-based sense the term originally carried. The intermediate stages, the modal shifts, and the formative conditions often disappear in this contemporary usage. By introducing stolling into English as a new conceptual term, we can preserve and expand the original process-oriented meaning.In this new usage, "stolling" refers not to the finality of being solid, but to the formative condition that precedes individuation, a shift in a metastable field that does not determine any fixed or final outcome.When something is described as "stolled", the process of individuation has already begun, and depending on the domain — material or non-material — a determinate form, structure, or configuration has been produced. Yet in most cases, especially in organic, psychic, and social processes, not all disparities and potentials are consumed. New disparities emerge, and a new cycle of stolling and individuation begins.
Johannes Bongers, Three diagrams [2023]. 1. The iPhone diagram: a model of how organisations, brands, and companies stabilise themselves through identity. 2. Individuation diagram: how something comes into being from a metastable pre-individual milieu. 3. Technotlogy diagram: the merger of 1 and 2 into a living philosophical and affective concept of ongoing creative and political becoming: technotlogy.com
Stolling as an ArtworkStolling is an artwork that aims to shift and clarify the conditions of real life, in contrast to the representational life produced through identity-thinking. It intervenes in the zone where lived processes—material, psychic, social, ecological—are reduced to stable images, categories, and identities. Stolling acts on the level where forms become formable, before they are captured by representation.Stolling does not depict or symbolise this process; it enacts it. By naming the formative condition between potential and individuation, Stolling exposes a dimension of life that precedes identity, objecthood, and representation. It makes perceptible the real ontogenetic processes through which life emerges, differentiates, and continues to become.In this sense, Stolling is not merely a philosophical concept. It is a technotlogical artwork, a tool for restoring the dynamics of becoming that identity-thinking suppresses. It brings the pre-individual field back into experience, allowing the viewer—participant, citizen, thinker—to sense the movements, tensions, and openings that constitute real life beyond its captured representations. Stolling thus contributes to the unmaking of the representational order that dominates contemporary culture and reopens the conditions for a life that is lived, not represented.
Robert Smithson, Glue Pour (1969)
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
*Stoll /stɔl/ (rhymes with poll, doll, toll)
verb (intransitive & transitive)Etymology: Early 21st century. A loanword from Dutch stollen, “to solidify,” extended into a broader conceptual field to fill a lexical and philosophical gap in English. In contemporary usage, stoll refers both to material solidification and to non-material transitions in which an undetermined field becomes capable of supporting formation.⸻1. (intransitive, material)To transition from a liquid, fluid, or molten state into a solid or semi-solid state.“After being poured into the mould, the metal will stoll within minutes.”
“The scientist observed the gel stoll under the microscope.”2. (transitive, material)To cause a substance to undergo this transition.“The enzyme rennet is used to stoll milk for cheese production.”
“A rapid quench in water stolls the lava into volcanic glass.”⸻3. (intransitive, non-material)To shift from an undetermined or metastable condition into a state capable of supporting formation, without determining a final structure. Used of psychic, social, ecological, and conceptual fields.“A collective atmosphere can stoll before any clear direction or identity appears.”
“His thoughts were still unformed; they needed time to stoll into something workable.”⸻4. (transitive, non-material)To bring a field, situation, or process into a formative condition without fixing its outcome.“The discussion stolled the group into a state where new ideas could emerge.”
“The platform "Technotlogy.com" stolls lived processes into conditions of becoming, without turning them into identities.”⸻Derived Form: stolled (adj.)
1. (material) “The stolled lava formed a sharp, rocky surface.”
2. (non-material) “A stolled mood settled over the room—formable, but not yet anything definite.”⸻Stolling /ˈstɔ.lɪŋ/ (rhymes with polling)uncountable nounEtymology: Early 21st century. From Dutch stolling, extended from material solidification to designate a formative transition applicable across material and non-material domains.⸻1. (material)The process of transitioning from a liquid to a solid or semi-solid state; solidification.“The stolling of the jam is a critical step to achieve the right consistency.”
“We measured the stolling rates of several polymer compounds.”2. (material)The result or product of this process.“The glossy stolling on the slag cooled into a thin crust.”⸻3. (non-material)A transition in which a metastable field – psychic, social, ecological, conceptual – shifts into a formative condition that can initiate processes of individuation without determining their final form.“Moments of collective stolling can open entirely new lines of becoming.”“Stolling marks the pre-individuating condition in which potentials become formable.”
Casting 'Denkmal' 2022, johannes bongers
