Anja Borowicz Richardson
GESTURE LABS: sculpting with object-gestures
Summary
My research investigates an idea of an ‘everyday’ working gesture as an sculptural proposition. A moment of engagement with an object (human or non-human, a massaged body or a building scaffold) becomes a site of material resonances and a space for new metaphors. I call this moment object-gesture.
Additional info
The term object-gesture is a shorthand and a contribution to thinking about physical labour and sculptural object. Thinking through material action enables my research to explore gaps and overlaps between different dimensions: material, emotional (affective) and imaginary (cognitive) so that certain relationships between subject and object are fostered or denied, and new metaphors are imagined.
The project draws on material-semiotic approach of new materialism, aiming to account for immaterial aspects of material engagement, encompassing the notion of sensuous, feelings and passions in embodied encounters between subjects and objects.
My key approach is in mixing taxonomies, putting things together to create in-between discursive spaces and new meanings. My works draw from everyday and un-choreographed, from street encounters, archival recordings and YouTube videos. I montage films of recorded gestures, dissect phrases of instructions and sample sounds of physical impacts. I stage artworks as affective situations [Gesture Labs], where audiences are invited to respond to the visual, aural and textual materials of body labours.
Gesture Labs
GestureLabs draw on the archives of recorded body labours, dissected phrases of instructions and extractions of gestic echoes. GestureLabs invite different audiences to journey across these networks of material, emotional and imaginary overlays.
___Our physical and haptic engagement is shifting – gestural movements at work and play are becoming smaller, our material encounters are increasingly digital. Yet the same mirror neurons are activated when performing a gesture, and when watching others perform, move and engage. These empathic mirroring connections with other bodies expand our own embodied awareness, our ‘techniques of the body’. Can we extend these embodied techniques through artificial stimulation of different sensual modalities?___
GestureLab 1 MIRRORING & ENACTING, participatory public installation, One HoeStreet, 2019. Developed in collaboration with a neuroscientist dr Adela Desowska. Commissioned by Artillery. Image ©James Robertshaw
GestureLab 2 BODYWORKS or WORK IN THE HEAD, workshop facilitated for OPENLAB programme at Chisenhale Dance Space. Invited by Antonio de la Fe, 2019.
GestureLab 3 BODYWORKS REIMAGINED, video installation, CRATE, 2019. Sponsored by Mayor of London. Image ©James Robertshaw
GestureLab X_tests for SOUNDING OUT EFFORT, RCA, 2020
GestureLab Y_tests for DIGITAL GESTURES, RCA, 2020
GestureLab Z_ideas for 7 DEGREES OF FREEDOM, 2021. Image sources: RCA robotic lab, Sleep Dealer by Alex Riviera, TaikaBox MachineMovement, Exoskeleton.
