Elske Rosenfeld

Archive of Gestures: Circling

To circle is to form a circle, to surround or move along a circle around something. To revolve is, similarly, to orbit a central point, or to turn on an axis, but also to recur at periodical intervals. Circling combines continuous movement with remaining in place. Geometrically, a circle can open into a helix, a spring, when imagined in 3D. In physics, a revolution refers to the periodic movement of an object around a focal point, which is enabled by the balancing of an inward acceleration and a tangential velocity. In its wider usage it refers to a sudden radical change in a system of ideas or technologies, a process of potentially violent social and political transition, the overthrow of a regime. In Marxist theory, a revolution is the violent and historically necessary changeover from one system to another.

Archive of Gestures is a research platform and archive in progress about the embodiment of revolt and revolution.

Revolutions and protests, from the democratic uprisings of 1989/90 to the renewed waves of revolts, movements and occupations from 2011 to today have wrested fleeting, but precious futures from their dystopian present(s). New ways of being briefly manifested in and between assembled bodies – outside any prior blueprint or plan. When emancipatory projects are declared as failed or as already completed, bodies turn into archives of a political knowledge that dominant historicisations cannot yet or no longer capture in words.

The emancipatory experience of the revolutions in East Germany and Eastern Europe in 1989/90 is this project’s starting point: The events’ emergent forms of radical collective self-empowerment enacted in streets and squares, assemblies and neighbourhoods, factories and schools were not only cut short by the installation of established (western) political
forms, but have been erased from a history reduced to »the Fall of the Wall.«

Archive of Gestures is initiated by Elske Rosenfeld and hosted by District * School without Center.

https://archiveofgestures.net

Elske Rosenfeld (geb. 1974, Halle/S.) forscht als Künstlerin, Autorin und Kulturarbeiterin zur Geschichte der Dissidenz in Osteuropa und zu den Ereignissen von 1989/90. Ausgehend von historischen Dokumenten und Archiven schafft sie Kontexte und Konstellationen, in denen diese Geschichte/n präsent werden können.
www.elskerosenfeld.net