Join us at MBAL for a conversation between Federica Chiocchetti and Lou Stoppard, the co-curators of the exhibition For One Solid Time, WET: Swimming Pools in the Imagination.
The discussion will be followed by IN VISIBLE FORM, a performance by Swiss artist Marie-Caroline Hominal, presented at the Piscine du Communal in Le Locle.
As the swimming pool enters its winter hibernation and gradually disappears from everyday life, it becomes a space withdrawn from public use—an almost abandoned place. This suspended state stands in striking contrast to the familiar image of the pool as a lively, social environment governed by shared rules and rituals. In the philosophy of Michel Foucault, the public swimming pool can be understood as a heterotopia—an “other space” that condenses multiple layers of meaning. Like a theatre, it temporarily gathers bodies, narratives, expectations, and utopias: an enclosed space where diverse, and sometimes contradictory, imaginaries converge.
Yet, once autumn arrives and the pool ceases to function as a social space, its status shifts. It slips away from its normative role and becomes a place in deviation, no longer fulfilling the purpose expected of it. In its silence, the dormant pool reveals what Foucault’s notion of heterotopia suggests implicitly: the dissident potential of a space once it escapes the order that ordinarily defines it.
In IN VISIBLE FORM, Hominal develops a sound piece and performance in which language and dance unfold in dialogue with the linear, geometric architecture of the swimming pool—or, alternatively, the exhibition space. A choir echoes selected words, creating resonances and repetitions that mirror movement. Hominal imagines a chimera-like body, poised between aquatic and human forms, as though a creature had evolved within a swimming pool and comes to life through movement and voice. The audience is immersed in the empty basin at the same level as the performers, while the swimming pool itself becomes an open-air resonating chamber, connecting architecture with the natural environment.
Marie-Caroline Hominal trained at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK Tanzakademie) and the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in London. She has performed with artists including Gisèle Vienne, Gilles Jobin, La Ribot, and Marco Berrettini. She created her first work, Fly Girl, in 2008. Since then, her practice has embraced a wide range of formats, including performances for a single spectator (Le Triomphe de la Renommée, 2013), performance-concerts (Silver, 2013), collaborative duets with François Chaignaud (Duchesses, 2009), the collaborative Hominal / trilogy with Markus Hörn (2018), Nelisiwe Xaba (2019), and David Hominal (2023), site-specific works such as Le Cirque Astéroïde (2020), performed on a stage mounted on a truck, and performances created for museums and other exhibition spaces, including Euréka, c’est presque le titre (2021). Her work has been presented across Europe, Asia, North America, and South America. In 2019, she received the Outstanding Female Dancer Award at the Swiss Dance Awards.
Lou Stoppard is a London-based writer and curator. She is the author of Pools, an exploration of swimming through photography, published by Rizzoli in 2020, and has written for the Financial Times, Aperture, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Her fiction has appeared in several publications, including Five Stories for Philip Guston, published by Printed Matter in 2024.
Federica Chiocchetti has been Head of Artistic and Cultural Programming at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris since May 2026. From 2022 to 2026, she served as Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle (MBAL) and was a member of the jury for the Swiss Pavilion, appointed by Pro Helvetia, at the 2026 Venice Biennale Arte. Previously, through her platform Photocaptionist, she collaborated with institutions including the V&A, Jeu de Paume, and L’Uomo Vogue. She holds a PhD from the University of Westminster on the intersections of word and image and, under the pen name Candida Desideri, publishes short stories and prose poetry, including Nachbilder (Spector Books, 2020).
The conversation will take place at 3:00 p.m. at MBAL, followed by the performance at 5:30 p.m. at the Piscine du Communal in Le Locle.
We look forward to welcoming you for this special event.
