aether1.org       Penelope Wehrli

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aether1.org Penelope Wehrli

A trip was to become a body of work.


Landscapes and cityscapes are states of mind in a larger sense. External forms of inner atmospheres. They have their own language which dictates ours. The changing structures and atmospheres of cities passed/passing stay imprinted on the mind and develop into mind-maps. I install frozen mind-maps. The traveller's body is the scale to read the map.

All pieces were site specific and as far as possible, immediate reactions to the place I chose to work in. I was interested in living pictures. Spaces or installations with living bodies as parts. Performance without motion, except for the extension of a breath. Living sculptures.
I was interested in the activity that lies in the space between the viewer and the picture or it's parts. An activity that would proceed in the viewers mind.
The audience had the option of staying or leaving as infront of any painting or sculpture.
The performer was never a specific person or a character, always depersonalized – a tool to picture an outside situation. That figure was suspended into a scenario of danger - a danger of physical and/or psychological danger - pinpointing the political and social scope of each city.