Link to project website -
https://gesture-media-politics.de
Gesture in focus - Gestural body movements play an increasingly vital role in disciplines across the board, including politics, art, the media, and technology. The gestures discussed pass from body to body and between states of medial representation. Protest movements, the respective aesthetics specific to those movements, the perpetuation of socio-economic crises over many decades, the plight of gig workers in precarious employment and mechanisms for the quantification of work and leisure are some of the issues addressed. What do gestures communicate about society and politics in the context of transformation driven by ubiquitous technology and media?
[workshops and rehearsals, at „Schmiede“, Hallein bei Salzburg, Österreich, 2017 - installation view of the performance space and sound work (*headphones to listen to the recorded movements and voices)]
[„transformation chain“, presentation and performance at conference „Affective Media“, University of Potsdam, 2017 – installation view of the performance in collaboration with Irina Kaldrack and Timo Herbst]
The texts are descriptions of hands in movement as being drawn by Timo Herbst. I focused on smaller excerpts of a 2m wide drawing with a complex sequence of hands in motion. All participants and further interested people were asked to perform the text while reading out loud and/or listening to their own recordings and trying to imitate their voice. An incredibly slow and simultaneous affordance of body work.
[„G20“, performance and installation, installation views, KV Leipzig, 2018, in collboration with Irina Kaldrack, Silas Mücke, Marcus Nebe and Timo Herbst, photo credits: Torsten Schmitt]
(KV – Verein für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig) in May 2018.
Using political gestures in frontal protest situations at the G20 Summit 2017 in Hamburg, Dina Boswank, Timo Herbst, Irina Kaldrack, Silas Mücke and Marcus Nebe developed an exhibition format that interlinks video recordings, sound works, photo installations, objects and performative lectures. Through overlays, reinforcement and disruption, various ways of thinking and different approaches to protest, political gestures and capacity for action are juxtaposed and further elaborated using spatio-temporal dramaturgy.
„Zentralperspektive / central perspective“ is the title of my final sound installaton as exhibited in Kunstraum Kreuzberg - Studio 1 in December 2018.
In the wake of the plundering of a supermarket at the G20 protests in Hamburg, press photographer Thomas Löhnes captured a widely-circulated photograph for the photo agency “Getty Images”. Using a central perspective, the image provides insight into the vandalized supermarket in which individuals wearing black balaclavas are seen carrying away objects. “They could have rearranged it, too. Wouldn’t that have been an even stronger political statement?”
Friends of the artist spent long hours reading descriptions of the protagonists’ hand and arm movements aloud, commenting on them and linking them to processes of image description and the political necessity of the operation, paying close attention to their own voices while reading. An associative work edited into a dialogue that addresses our daily confrontation with “ethically unsettling” imagery.
[„Zentralperspektive“, installation view at group exhibition „Throwing Gestures“, print-outs and sound station (left side), Kunstraum Bethanien, Studio 1, Berlin, 2018, photo credits: Torsten Schmitt]