CORRESPONDING GESTURES

BAKHYT BUBICANOVA + KAELO MOLEFE

“The constant adaptation to a physical, mechanical or chemical aim is pursued in a series of assembled actions … assembled for the individual not by themself alone but by all their education, by the whole society to which they belong, in the place they occupy in it”

Marcel Mauss – Techniques of the body (1934)

The artists shared the process of their correspondence between Kazakhstan and South Africa, between Russian and English, between language and gestures. Bakhyt Bubicanova (on the left) gives a glimpse of their WhatsApp communication in Russian, while Kaelo Molefe (on the right) walks us through the process of creating “Corresponding Gestures” in English. No revisions were made to the authors’ original punctuation and spelling.

Художники поделились процессом их корреспонденции между Казахстаном и Южной Африкой, между русским и английским, между языками и жестами. Бахыт Бубиканова (слева) на русском частично рассказала об их коммуникации через WhatsApp, в то время как Каэло Молефе (справа) описал процесс создания «Соответствующих жестов» на английском. Орфография и стиль авторов сохранены.

Мы переписывались с Коэло относительно того, что выкладывать, решили пока выложить процесс переписки. Я отметила для себя важные моменты и отправляю вам скриншотами прям с вотсапп, так будет реалистично на мой взгляд.

С первого дня знакомства Коэло заговорил со мной на казахском языке.

The initial correspondence between the artists was predominantly text-based, with images being used to stimulate the textual exploration of various social phenomena. 

A number of recurring topics emerged, namely: the body as a site of power and control, the embodied nature of social conditioning, and the problem of body-mind dualism and its historical weaponization for the purposes of control and oppression.

Another important topic that emerged was the failure of the spoken-word to articulate the particularities of human experiences; and how this inadequacy of language is exacerbated by geographical and cultural distance.

The artists were inspired by the topics explored during the initial exchanges as well as the writing of Marcel Mauss which suggests that it is through the body that we experience and transform the world around us; an invitation to pay attention to practice as a primary source of knowledge.

The artists decided to engage in a dialogue that circumvented the failures of language by making recourse to gesture, embodied practice and performativity.  

Each artist sent a 30-40 second non-verbal video of a gestural expression.  This then elicited a response from the other until a dialogue of gestures emerged.  The gestures are not an appeal to coherence but rather intended to be associative, suggestive exercises in the quotidian and incomprehensible; intended to acknowledge and embrace the near-impossibility of true understanding across space and time.

At the same time, these gestural expressions may be seen to suggest something about the embodied everyday practices of the artists – sometimes purposeful, sometimes libidinal, sometimes absurd.

This methodology – one located in gesture and practice – helped provide insights that text-based correspondence was unable to reveal with the same affective clarity.  We learned – in a turn to assembled actions – that where language fails, the body itself can gesture us toward a different understanding of ourselves and the world.