‘Gestures Of Hands Business’

Performed 18.05.19 - Silent Green, Berlin, DE

 

Gesture Of Hands Business is a performed publication, assemblage of two books meant to be activated by two performers.

 

Tracing back the lineage of intentional gesture, Gestures Of Hands Business iconography dwells upon Gesture handbooks published in the 19th century. Initially intended for theatre performers, these handbooks achieved a great success among upper classes who mimicked and recuperated them.

 

Departing from that, Gestures Of Hands Business follows a research on poetics, performance script and contemporary politics.

 

 

 

​A choreography for invisible hands.  (In the midst of the enlightened 18th century in England, the simultaneity of Adam Smith’s elusive idea of an invisible hand regulating the free market, along with the literary developments of the closet drama, a play never acted, and never meant to be staged; would not make any sense together if they were not jointed by some external element.  In this attempt for a dance score, they would take turns being content and form, taken for what they are: silent breakthroughs, both metaphoric and concrete, suppositions that later on would recover other meanings, altering established codes. Although they do not share very obvious and immediate features, they both recover abstract and imaginative aspects, seep through private realms and reorganize interpersonal address.  This closet drama, in the form of a choreography is an attempt to bridge several economical practices of the hand, seeing the one through the prism of the other, under the form of the other. This text is a call for performative images, provide metaphors and criss-cross domains of hand business.)  Instructions and terminologies
(for performers only) The performance will take place between two persons, sharing the same table and sitting, facing each other. Each will have two books. One is an illustrated book, which will be placed on the left side under the left hand ; the other one is a score, and will be placed on the right side, below the right hand. In the left book, appear several drawings and illustrations that will appear one after another as the reader go through the score (the right book), going to the following page is mentioned via the instruction “Turn the page of the left book”. In the right book appear several timelines and texts. The left paragraph designates left book-related actions, regarding the  flipping of the pages. The middle paragraph relates to speech, and what has to be read. The right paragraph stands for the hands choreography. Both left and right paragraphs are placed on a continuous line, which designates the timeline. The eyes of the reader follow the line as it guides them through the temporal component of the text. When one reach the the bottom of the page while following the line, one has to turn the page. The gaze of each person will be primarily focused on the hand business taking place, although they could exchange gaze, their attention should be focused on the hands.

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