Gesture Forum

In January 2017, Gesture Forum led by Avital Barak began operating at the Institute for Public Presence. The forum gathers every three weeks to study and explore the issue of human gesture in art, culture, and theory. Forum participants include artists, curators, and theoreticians.

Gesture as a concept, action, political space, an artistic expression, and a theoretical and critical tool constitutes the framework and medium for a joint interdisciplinary journey of investigation and exploration. Benjamin’s theoretical engagement with gesture followed by Agamben, through Debord and his group’s situational thinking, mark a multifaceted space of occurrence; however it is not the boundaries of this space that the forum seeks to locate, but rather its interior.

Gesture as a moment of the political, of breaking the narrative, of an encounter between different forces, leads to a situation whereby its appearance enables reflection, calls for criticism. In our meetings we shall endeavor to understand: How do we identify a gesture and the effect it creates? What are the conditions for its creation? Is it is dependent on an audience, an external view, and interpretation?

How does a gesture, as a physical act, as a movement, transform into a concept in artistic thinking (Brecht, Benjamin), in sociological thinking (Goffman, Bourdieu), or in political thinking (Debord, Agamben)? Does it mark an intersection that combines body and consciousness, intention and action, or does it actually seek to separate them? And what distinguishes it from other concepts in political and artistic theory – action, creation, work (artwork), performance?