Kerri Jefferis and Sophie Chapman. Of the Hand that Point Out, of Fingers that See

About

‘Maybe I have written to see; to have what I never would have had; so that having would be the privilege not of the takes and encloses, of the gullet, of the gut; but of the hand that points out, of fingers that see, that design, from the tips of the fingers that transcribe by the sweet dictates of vision. From the point of view of the soul’s eye: the eye of a womansoul.’ – Helene Cixous

We have to live in the future. Anyone practicing politics that goes against the current socio-economic nightmare* is practicing the future. They live in the future, by desire and by necessity. We have to start somewhere. We have to start with the micro.

So what are the gestures of our collective desired future? If language isn’t working for us, can we use our bodies? How can we communicate trust and solidarity to one another through our bodily language? How can we include contradiction within our gestures? Attempt to cover the distance that is perceived and experienced of difference? Include complexity? Seepage and slippage? Overflowing subjectivity? A sense of humour?

Gestures are conceived through metaphor. Bodies signifying, expressing. Therefore we cannot decontextualise movement and we are unwilling to separate discourse and materiality, language and embodiment. Bodies give permission. They alternate power. They co-author. They use shared and marginalised history. They follow desire lines. They identify with the past and with the present. They assemble. They have to unlearn. They change.

‘There is a body wherever there is resistance. But their potential to speak is waiting to be mined.’ – Zsuzsanna Soboslay Moore