May 22nd | Lindsay Reckson on “Viral Gestures, or How to Use Your Body at the End of the World”

Please Join the Affect and the Emotions Workshop

Monday, May 22nd, inCobb 304, from4:30-6:00pm CT

when

Lindsay Reckson

Associate Professor of English, Haverford College

presents:

“Viral Gestures, or How to Use Your Body at the End of the World”

Image: “An anonymous post-it contributed to Currently, a 2023 exhibit on capital punishment that I helped organize with artist Mark Menjívar at Haverford College. In pencil on a green post-it, written in all caps: “EXERCISE: HOLD EACH OTHER ACCOUNTABLE,” with “ACCOUNTABLE” scratched out.” – Lindsay Reckson
Description: This piece includes writing towards my book of essays in progress, Notes on Gesture. The book is a series of short essays on the ethics and politics of gesture in queer/feminist video art and performance since the mid-1960s (including works by Yvonne Rainer, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Margaret Salmon, Maria Laet, Steffani Jemison, Martine Syms, and others). In “ViralGestures,” I’m thinking through the communicability of gesture—its collective, relational form—primarily in works by Jemison and Syms. Broadly in this piece, I’m wondering whether and how Black feminist gestures produce a glitch in carceral/capitalist knowledge and visual regimes, as well as how such gestures model ongoingness in apocalyptic times.   

Please reach out to the coordinators with any requests or questions about accessibility or the workshop, and we look forward to welcoming you at our meeting! 

gtimir