Moving Stone, 2022, stills and excerpt, single channel video, 4: 35 mins. An Adelaide Film Festival commission

Moving Stone/Moving image

In Moving Stone, the artist presents a meditation on the ritual and routine attendant to everyday life. To create the work Jingwei draws on A Foolish Man Removes a Mountain, an ancient well-known Chinese Daoist fable, in which an elderly man begins the task of moving a mountain with a small shovel to create a route between two villages. The story is a metaphor for perseverance as well as a call to collective action. Against an ink painting of a mountain view, the view from her childhood home, Jingwei performs with precision three simple actions – holding a stone, pushing a stone along the ground, and carrying a stone – each action taking place according to the mathematical equation of pi (3.14159265358979), understood as a universal measurement of clarity. Set to a score by Zephyr Quartet, a string ensemble, the piece conveys the importance of repetition, and the measured quality of persistence.  

Moving Stone, 2022,
single channel video, 4: 35 mins
An Adelaide Film Festival commission

Performer: Jingwei Bu
Background ink painting: Jingwei Bu
Videographer: Ying He
Mentor: Tim Gruchy
Music: Blindfold by Zephyr Quartet

Moving Stone is an ongoing project. Check project Moving Stone/Performance.