Düsseldorf (2018) #2

The starting point for this photograph by Maria Hassabi is her live installation “STAGING” at K20 in Düsseldorf (2017). It is a performance across a vivid pink carpet with an ambient soundscape. The performer moves at a measured pace, morphing the body through imperceptible shifts, in a two-hour choreographic cycle that loops during museum hours. Hassabi says: “I’m working with photography to expand the possibilities of liveness through digital technology. Photography can capture another aspect of the work that perhaps was not considered in the making.” She explores stillness and disrupts expectations of live performance, describing the performer as moving between subject and object, dance and sculpture, the live body and the still image, the spectacular and the everyday. She adds: “The more I work with the idea of stillness, the more I realize that the live/alive body can never be still. A twitch of the eye or simply breathing keeps the body alive. Stillness never exists in liveness. This is the paradox.” In this photograph, Hassabi appears performing alone, small against the carpet’s monumental expanse; its texture records traces of her movement.