Moving Portraits - Fluid Rock
Moni Wespi
‘From micromovement to stillness.
Liquefy time, space, and materiality.
From rock to soft.
From speed to pause.
Our quick lives, confronted by stone.
Movement in another timescale matters.
Get inspired, slow down.’
- Moni Wespi
In Fluid Rock, a human body stands between two rocks, almost disappearing into the landscape through a printed textile that blends with its surroundings. Movements are minimal and slow: the fabric liquefies materialities of air, body, water and rock. The human barely shifts. Balancing between stillness and micro-movement, the work invites physical deceleration and attentive observation of subtle change.
Part of Moving Portraits, a project Moni Wespi began in 2014, Fluid Rock explores the relationship between humans, identity, and environment. Blending visual art, performance, and textile printing, the Swiss/Belgian visual artist choreographs slowness to question our perception of speed. Her hybrid works — ranging from videoworks to live performances — invite viewers to pause, listen, and sense the body as an interface between inner and outer worlds, gently asking us to breathe like a tree, become a stone, and simply be present.
2021, single-channel video, 4’12”’, silent, in loop
Art direction: Moni Wespi
Camera: Lucia Gerhardt
Courtesy of the artist.
Moni Wespi
°1977, Boston, USA
Moni Wespi is an international choreographer, art director and visual designer. In her choreographic practice, she creates images through radical scenographic choices, combined with her movement research. In collaboration with video artist Lucia Gerhardt, Wespi developed the choreographic visual art project Moving Portrait, created as participative and inclusive art processes, presented throughout Europe as video installations. She loves to divert attention away from the stage/black or white box and blur the boundaries between audience and art object/performer. Since 2019 the Project starts taking performative and interactive forms, where audience takes the place of the performer such as in Moving Bling, Step in Set, and most recently Slowed Landscapes.
Moni Wespi lives and works between Brussels and the Swiss Alps. Her work is supported by a.o. In Situ European Network of Art in Public Spaces (EU), C-Takt, Theater Op de Markt, Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles, La Bellone and CIFAS (BE), Zona K (I), Riverbero (CH).
Photo: Moni Wespi © CARTE BLANCHE Pieter Ampe