Paper short abstract:

In this panel, I will question the negative hands and the mudras as case studies for the 'gestorial third': What happens in-between gestures and images? Between images of gestures (such as archives of theatre, mudras) and images originating from gestures (such as negative hands)?

Paper long abstract:

Based on body techniques and traditional formations of classical repertoires of gestures of Indian theatres (such as mudras), my research questions the ways in which traditional body techniques evolve when transmitted. What happens to the initial shape of the gesture? and how can we map its change in space and time? Here I investigate the recording of gesture: its imprint and traces, as a parallel story of the gesture.

Meanwhile the negative hand gives both an historical and a pictorial counterpoint to gesture analysis, traces printed on cave walls reveal many questions: how to deduce gestures through image analysis?

Aiming at gesture modelisation, by designing tools for 'en-capturing' gesture (capturing & encoding), developing an experimental anthropology (Bernard, 1865), I seek to develop an interactive apparatus to navigate the archive.

Digital images have the ability to inscribe gesture images into code and thus, into scripted forms, coding create space in between text and images. Contrarily to still images (Deleuze, 1983), traditional archival techniques, such as drawings, engravings, photography, and video, generate a specific momentum of perception, which points back at living movements and their relations to its still (re-)presentation (Bergson, 1934). That leads to my research question: Is there a 'gestorial third'?

Analysing the various effects of technology on the body shaping, I will investigate the notion of efficacy (Jullien, 1996) attached to both poiesis and praxis traditions. I will then question how to design conceptual and pragmatic tools in order to "navigate" and "(re)embody" the gesture archives.