Transforming Political Gesture – G20

During the workshop, Dina Boswank, Timo Herbst and Irina Kaldrack worked on the performative installation “G20” with the support of Silas Mücke. In rehearsal processes and discussions, we developed a precise spatio-temporal dramaturgy interlinking video recordings, sound works, photo installations and performative lectures. The installation focuses on enabling imagination, various ways of thinking and different approaches to the question of protest, political gestures and capacity for action via overlays, supplementation, reinforcement and disruption. The exhibition was held on October 20 and 21 at the Leipzig Art Association. The lecture-performance took place on October 20.

Untitled installation

Laurie Young and Timo Herbst continued working on the form of ramps for the entry stairs of Bethanien´s Studio 1. It became clear that an inclination of 6° (usable incline for independent wheelchair) is impossible to construct in the landmarked architecture of Bethanien. Over several site visits, Young and Herbst built a life size model of 11 paper ramps following the natural incline of the stairs. Visual artist Jakob Argauer was invited to become part author of this work by considering different motifs or textural imprints to be applied on the ramps. The motif will be informed through Bethanien´s history of access through meetings with the architectural bureau who are currently preparing the renovation of the landmarked building.

Economies of Gesture

In the last workshop, the group deepened their investigation into musical.ly. The social media app musical.ly (renamed TikTok in 2018) allows users to record playback videos set to short pop song snippets or movie soundtracks that often include typical hand gestures.

Group members developed a score of political gestures titled “musical.ly gestures” that (wish to) raise the question of presence and the public sphere at the intersection of economy, prosumerdom, self-expression and forms of work.

Gesture and Labour

The Gesture and Labour project is in the final stage of specification, form-finding and production. Additional experimentation and investigation was performed into topics that turned out to be crucial during the working process within the previous workshops. 1) perception-threshold – The ambiguity inherent to bodily movements creates multi-layered narratives. There are certain points of equilibrium where this becomes prominent. 2) restructured movements – how far can a certain movement be freed from its sequential syntax without loosing its purpose within a working environment.
As to the its presentation, a combination of videos and drawing will be used. The juxtaposition of these divergent forms will allow to specifically stress the intersections and gaps of their syntax.