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REPLACEMENT

The Sense Of A Gesture / Le Sens Du Geste / De Zin Van Een Gebaar.

 

 

What is a gesture, but a "signified without signifier" (Agamben), the action before every proper (written) language, hence, its origin and limit? In this/its sense, writing, or more precisely, how we write what we write, is in itself a gesture that cannot be overseen. Its implications are radical, they trace our reading of writing’s scenario as a sign of Being; from what is written to where the writings take place, including all the in-betweens -which are not few. Therefore, it’s understanding is fundamental in the scope of a comprehensive written art. Lets take, for instance, the little aesthetic story behind a sequence of gestural statements in translation: at the beginning were the words, and the words were conceptual art, and the art may be constructed/fabricated/built (but not necessarily) by Laurence Weiner, whose sentenced –piece of- reference is simply: “The grace of a gesture.” Specifically the one shown at the Palazzo Bembo during the 55th Venice biennale, which must be said, is a sub-version of its own inspiration, originally intended-to-be presented at Lisbon in 2010. But that’s an other/old story.

 

“The (Art) world is full of literature (on both, the so-called ur-author and this already-made piece), more or less interesting, I do not wish to add any more” (Huebles, edited). What really concerns us here is the attitude revealed in the (mentally uttered) sentence and its subsequent mediated iterations: the method became formula, the typeface a trademark (in this case, property of The Written Art Foundation (see the irony here?) and its content meaning/sense unreachable/undistinguishable. Is such the grace of Weiner’s gesture? If so, it’s necessary to retrace the initial intention, and figure out what went wrong along the vaporetti’s ensign journey through the mainstream channels.

 

The official documents recite as infinitum that in this piece Wiener “uses words as (if) objects” and in its contemplation “we realize we are dealing with its three-dimensionality-quality of providing space and encompassing substances,” creating the illusion of a dialogue that never took place and whose line of argumentation is no less hallucinatory, no matter how much we want to believe in it: “The Grace of a Gesture becomes many things while always remaining the same.” The consequence is an open door leading to our own definition of these “many things”, an invitation (if not direct provocation) to re-appropriate the gesture and put it at the service of the terms that better please us. Which was exactly what happened next, once we found our own Palazzo with turquoise walls in a forgotten pass-though under Rue de la Loi. By doing so, there, we were literally trespassing the Law, even  more, beyond the reach of its authority...

 

...If the studio assistants had a state-of-the-art cutting plotter, we had a rusty large-format school printer; if the typeface was already installed in the software, we had a software to trace the typeface; if the text was printed in fine adherent vinyl, we had an x-acto knife with enough blades to retrace the printing and spray paint to reprint the text; If Weiner’s had grace, our gesture had sense; If the original sentence was translated to ten languages and exhibited in a Venice Biennale, ours is a permanent intervention amid the European Union headquarters and has been translated into its three-way-speech system; and if his words plough though the Italian sea on a vapporetti, ours are still surfing the data stream of the Word Wide Web in a YouTube video. These are/were the terms (media and subjet matter) under which our re-placed interpretation took place. The rest is matter of recognition, even in a context where the reader/reading is conditioned by the absolute absence of specific references; once written (our job) is already done. Echo, literally, always has the last word.” (Dworkin)

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