Revolutions and protests, from the democratic uprisings of 1989/90* to the renewed waves of revolts, movements and occupations from 2011 to today have wrested fleeting, but precious futures from their dystopian present(s). New ways of being briefly manifested in and between assembled bodies – outside any prior blueprint or plan. When emancipatory projects are declared as failed or as already completed, bodies turn into archives of a political knowledge that dominant historicisations cannot yet or no longer capture in words. 


*
The emancipatory experience of the revolutions in East Germany and Eastern Europe in 1989/90 is this project’s starting point: The events’ emergent forms of radical collective self-empowerment enacted in streets and squares, assemblies and neighbourhoods, factories and schools were not only cut short by the installation of established (western) political forms, but have been erased from a history reduced to “the Fall of the Wall.”

ARCHIVE OF GESTURES is a research platform and archive in progress about the embodiment of revolt and revolution.

The GESTURES assembled here initiate and document searches for visual, textual, somatic ways of approaching the stored up, emancipatory knowledge of past revolutions.

How can we recover – and release onto the present – a political impulse that has not yet been spent? 

ARCHIVE OF GESTURES will be presented at the workshop “(Selbst-)Erzählungen und Umbruchspuren im Œuvre von Künstler*innen der DDR” at the University of Potsdam, 22 Sept 2023, 10 am - 8 pm. 

As site-specific iteration of the video and collage STANDING STILL are part of the show “Ways of Unseeing” at Lunds konsthall, Sweden.

Curated by Hans Carlsson, with works by Harun Farocki, Cecilia Germain, Maria Jacobson, Chloé Galibert-Laîné & Kevin B. Lee, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Patricia Morosan, Magnhild Øen Nordahl, Elske Rosenfeld, Birender Kumar Yadav.

 16 Sept 2023 – 21 Jan 2024

A print version of the chapter Circling has just come out as part of the magazine Outside the Box # 8: Kämpfe.

Outside the Box. Zeitschrift für feministische Gesellschaftskritik is a Leipzig based magazine dedicated to social critique with a feminist focus.   

A pdf of the contribution is available for download HERE. 

A talk about Revolutionary Gestures between East Germany and Gezi, is out now in Turkish on 

https://www.5harfliler.com

You can download the flyer HERE.

I am very happy to announce the launch of the Archive of Gestures – a research platform and archive in progress and new iteration of my long-term research into the embodiment of revolt and revolution from 1989/90 to the present. Four of its works/gestures, including three new works, will be on show at the 12th Berlin Biennale, which opens today and runs till September 18th.