14 - 16 June 2017
The American University of Paris with Pantheon Sorbonne University, Institute ACTE (Arts Créations Théories Esthétiques), CNRS (French National Center of Scientific Research), France
Image by The Arts in Society
About
Founded in 2000, the Arts in Society Research Network
offers an interdisciplinary forum for discussion of the role of the arts
in society. It is a place for critical engagement, examination and
experimentation, developing ideas that connect the arts to their
contexts in the world – on stage, in studios and theaters, in
classrooms, in museums and galleries,
on the streets and in communities.
Gestures That Matter
Making a gesture involves confronting the unknowable. A
gesture is not simply mechanical like a movement, nor is it fully semantic as a
sign might be, nor fundamentally intentional like an action must be. The idea
of a “gesture” escapes the classical categories of meaning and is never
developed as an independent notion. A trait that often characterizes gesture is
its ability to use the body as a means to draw evanescent traces. Because a gesture
inadvertently creates relation,
a “milieu” institutes itself within the
interstices of being and metamorphoses our quotidian lives. The gesture is
often a tool towards the transformation of the self and of the world. André Leroi-Gourhan
writes that “the tool is only real in
the gesture which renders it operative
and only exists within a cycle of operativity.”
Intrinsically inter-corporeal and inter-subjective, the gesture
is a “means without end,” in the words of Giorgio Agamben. The gesture
is always a form of the intermedial. But when the gesture apprehends its
mediality in an honest and noble manner, it becomes an artwork. That is
when a gesture “matters.” Whether it emerges in a ritualistic, artistic
or technical context, the gesture extends and transmits itself well
beyond the duration of its concrete manifestation for both the doer (the
actor) or the one doing the observing (the spectator). It is right
there that the body draws a simple gesture and aims to show the most
rudimentary form, but also the most essential, of that which we call
“art.” The gesture shows a clear materiality insofar as it does not
disappear as it seems, and it leaves permanent changes in the art world
and in within society. That is when gestures “matter,” insofar as they
both are important for giving a deep meaning to our lives and inscribe
durable transformation in the flux of everyday event. Gestures matter
because they are ethically, politically and aesthetically important.
Gestures matter because they do not evaporate but shape our lives on the
long term.
Barbara Formis
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The Equality project by Roberta Orlando will take part in the Twelfth International Conference on the Arts in Society,
as part of the Social, Political and Community Agendas in the Arts.
Find out the full program here.
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