Accumulation of Gestures

Accumulation of Gestures, included in the series Trinomials of the Form, proposes a dialogue between two historical pieces from the Archive 94-20 and a contemporary short piece produced by the Observatory. This triple relationship functions as a node of recontextualisation and reconsideration: it seeks to recover meanings preserved in one of the project’s archives, bring them into play from the present and open them up to new interpretations, while also stimulating the Observatory’s current production and reinforcing its dimension as an authorial project.

Accumulation of Gestures develops from three derivations, each exploring different degrees of subjectivity and the state that follows difference: that moment in which complicity – whether objective or subjective, and at times beyond the human – has been consolidated and therefore becomes necessary. This starting point is located in a subtle zone, where the recognition of the nearby world intertwines with intimacy, and where shared experience is built through unconditional exposure. The risk of shared intuitions transforms into a condition of possibility and an open horizon of discovery.

The world orbiting a galaxy, the wild world inside the domestic world. The community in motion – the departure from the centre and the search for otherness – manifests itself in everyday life, beneath a floating roof or within a residence. Organisms that live, rest, and prepare for experiences yet to come. In this wandering existence, home becomes a mobile space, and identity is built through the repetition of gesture. The shared ritual intertwines with another form of displacement: the inner search, the passage between visible and invisible worlds, in an attempt to transcend the tangible and interpret the bonds that maintain harmony.

The session unfolds through temporal sequences that traverse a broad spectrum of materialities: from analogue narrative to post-silent imaginaries. Accumulation of Gestures contextualises the intimate relationship between worlds that ultimately tend toward an indissoluble unity.


Unterm Zelt, 14 min, Sibylle Stürmer, 1993 

A look at a family circus. While Ramona Barelli, the daughter of the circus director, prepares for her performance, the Moroccan workers set up the tent. The families of the artists and  workers cohabitate together in the same place, and yet they know very little about one another.


Accumulation of Gestures, 5 min, Observatori de Vídeo No Identificat

A silent passage composed of portraits of wild and domestic animals introduces a perceptual reflection on the diversity of existence. Gestures and reactions, relationships and distant kinships with the human, or our continuity within a world orbiting a galaxy about which we know almost nothing.


Zeit der Seelen, 37 min, Tinatin Gurchiani, 2008 

A nursing home with patients suffering from dementia. A place where transience becomes especially evident, but at the same time a space in which people, through their emotions, perceive the limits of transcendence: times, places, perceptions, logic, roles, and values, where only that which is essential becomes truly essential, beyond restraints, controls, and boundaries.

A place and a time for reflection, for transition and fidelity to oneself; a world of struggle and hope, of inner freedom and imprisonment all at once: a world with its own logics and perceptions.

Activity curated by Observatori de Vídeo No Identificat - Desorg punt Org