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| Post-reflections on 'The School of Gestures' |
What was described as...
...quickly descended into a mass of bodies, partially participant driven and partially directed by the artist. Loftily written but,what was in actuality a superficial experience with the apparent end goal of producing beautiful documentation of bodies undulating, isolated, interacting, en masse and very often hyper sexualized. The humanity of the situation was very limited as self assured individuals got up to be photographed and perform as one would in something more closely aligned with high-fashion, with few traces of self consciousness. Reminding of an elaborate Instagram shoot where attractive and relatively homogeneous amateurs become models and the end product was more important than the process. Organizers introduced the "workshop" by talking about the "tasteful" end documentation and that participants should be "present in the moment" and not take any photos but the subtext I gathered from this was that this emphasis on the final documentation and the participants inability to participate its co-creation therefor placed total ownership of final documentation on the organizers. What could have been a participatory, relational, empowering event was reduced to a staged, pseudo-fashion shoot where participants could embrace their inner narcissists as they performed in front of an audience as well as the camera, ultimately to be exploited by the artist/organizer(s) for their future gains.
