On gestural apparatuses for a memory to come

26.8.2024 0 Tykkää 0 kommenttia

What is the form of that which can hold, size, and measure what is happening? Are there some gestures that can, in some sense, size what is occurring in absolute fragility?

Luis Guerra

In 2020, I finished my postdoctoral studies at the Center for Artistic Research (CfAR) at the University of the Arts Helsinki. That was when I began to work on the notion of Gestural Philosophy, which comes from my research on the thinking and practice of French pedagogue Fernand Deligny. I created the concept of Gestural Philosophy to understand how artistic practices think. Of course, I am talking about art in terms that go beyond the perceptual regime we live in. Some practices are undomiciled, without fixed abode. Practices that never will be participants of the given and keep them critically engaging with their social and political environments.

In my research on artist pedagogy and artistic thinking, I continue to explore these issues, drawing from continental philosophy, particularly the works of French philosophers Alain Badiou, Jean Louis Déotte and Bernard Stiegler, and combining them with artists’ practices from Latin America and contemporary political thinking. This interdisciplinary approach led me to introduce the concept of gestural apparatuses, forms and practices that create surfaces of resonance and echo for a memory to come. These apparatuses are not mere tools; they are complex, communal and challenging structures that carve out spaces for a memory to emerge. But what is a memory to come? It is a memory that lies ahead of us, shaped by our actions and the creation of sites for gestures to dwell and shelter. These apparatuses are fragile, communal, and challenging to trace. They form trajectories that enable sudden encounters through which a memory can return.

When I was writing the book, COVID-19 hit the entire globe. Everything changed or seemed to change, for a while. Some of my first theoretical assumptions changed completely under COVID-19 restrictions. That experience marked the book, and a memory returned to me, too. I began to write more about certain practices that have been important in my own artistic practice. Writing became an apparatus, a gestural process through which a form of thinking evolved. A thinking that wasn’t only philosophical in the sense of the European tradition. At moments, the writing became poetic. It was so poetic that I published another book first: Wandering Echoes, a handbook of operative losses (Errant Bodies Press, Berlin, 2023), presenting my thinking directly in poetry. Gestural Apparatuses for a Memory to Come completes that effort to think from the art practice. It is a result of my research at the University of the Arts Helsinki and a contribution to the Research Institute. I hope to open paths to walk with others.

The publication has been peer-reviewed.

Luis Guerra
On gestural apparatuses for a memory to come
Art theoretical writings from the Academy of Fine Arts (18)
The Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki, 2024

ISSN 2343-1008
ISBN 978-952-353-464-3 (printed)
ISBN 978-952-353-465-0 (pdf)

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