Shoes are no longer simply tools of transit, but places of encounter, intertwining human, stone and earth.
To move forward, do we always have to move? Progress in Place debunks the myth of movement, freeing the shoe from its weight of inertia. In their weight, in their rejection of effortless movement, they demand something deeper: presence, contemplation, a kinship with the very earth on which we stand.
Basalt stones – ancient, volcanic, unruly – do not submit to easy steps. They resist, reminding the body of its connection to place, to gravity, to the earth. Progress is not speed, but friction, awareness, slow and deliberate negotiation of being. These shoes do not merely contain stones, but coexist with them, wrapping them, shaping them, binding them in a tactile choreography of leather and rock. The smooth, sculpted uppers contrast with the rough, solid soles, creating a tension between the organic and the man-made, between the past and the present, between the stillness of stone and the restless desire to move.
The project began with a pilgrimage: a trip to Rocks Village, Israel, to follow the wisdom of the stones, listening to their silent, geological time. There a question emerged: what if a shoe served not the foot, but the earth? Inspired by Suiseki, the Japanese practice of venerating natural stones as art objects, the work bridges ancient veneration and contemporary realization. Traditional sandal-making techniques meet digital fabrication, with 3D-scanned stones shaping the shapes of the shoes, whose stubborn forms dictate the final fit.
Displayed in dialogue with the space, these shoes invite touch, gaze and reflection. They are artifacts of time and intention, a meditation on the quiet radicality of standing still. Progress is not the absence of movement: it is the presence of thought, of kinship, of becoming with the earth beneath our feet.