Found Gestures: Sally Morfill & Susan Giles

The sound of the human voice ‘lacks extension… although it belongs to duration, sound never lasts long enough.' [1] The same is true of the gestures that synchronise with verbal expression, when the movement of the hands partner the voice to construct meaning. In communicating spatial and embodied memories, our gestures have the capacity to assume alternate subjectivities; slipping between internal and external viewpoints to combine iconic descriptive gesture with idiosyncratic movements, creating what David McNeill describes as a ‘thread of visuospatial imagery.’ [2]

For Found Gestures, Susan Giles and Sally Morfill record visuospatial imagery made by those who witnessed exhibitions and events at Five Years’ primary venues during its twenty-year history. They select fragments of these threads from a mass of motion capture data, removing them from their fleeting context and translating them into material objects. In attending to personal recollections of previous exhibitions at Five Years, these objects add to a pre-existing archive of documentation and ephemera. They convey recollections of embodied experiences: the broad-brush rememberings of past events, or careful attention to detail.

Each object delineates a three-dimensional drawing in air. Points on the hand extend into lines, first in virtual space, and finally in a material form, as 3D-printed fragments of gesture. A translation from line to object occurs in the process of 3D printing, as a spool of thread-like filament - a ready-made line - fuses to become a series of forms.

The provisional arrangement of these objects invites interaction. The eye or the hand can follow these lines of movement, imitating the gesture as we place ourselves ‘so to speak, in the hand’s footsteps.’ [3] Each is the left over trace of a performative action, and an invitation to reactivate a moment of speaking.

Found Gestures began with a collaborative residency and exhibition at Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC), Chicago in Spring 2019. HPAC has a near eighty-year history to draw on, and its community responded by describing works dating back as far as twenty years. These works translated movement through a series of adhesive vinyl wall and floor-based drawings.

https://www.hydeparkart.org/exhibition-archive/found-gestures/

Five Years will be hosting Giles and Morfill for a short residency in early June to record and process movement data. The resulting objects will be shown in the gallery during usual opening hours (Sat/Sun 1-6pm) and for visits by appointment from June 22nd.

http://susangiles.net/
http://www.art.mmu.ac.uk/profile/smorfill

Derrida, J. (1979) ‘Scribble: (writing-power).’ Yale French Studies, No.58 pp.117-147
McNeill, D. (2019) ‘Essay on viewpoints – inside-looking-out, outsidelooking-in and omniscient,’ (in press).
Barthes, R. (1985) The responsibility of forms : critical essays on music, art and representation. Hill and Wang.

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Left to right:

Found Gestures, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, installation view

Folayemi Wilson speaks about Jefferson Pinder’s
Onyx Odyssey at Hyde Park Art Center, November 8, 2015 – January 24, 2016 (detail)

Molly Dunson, Ethan Larbi, Ashley Lazaro and Emanuel Wiley speak about Folayemi Wilson’s
Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times at Hyde Park Art Center, March 31 – July 14, 2019 (detail)

Molly Dunson, Ethan Larbi, Ashley Lazaro and Emanuel Wiley speak about Folayemi Wilson’s
Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times at Hyde Park Art Center, March 31 – July 14, 2019 (detail)

Molly Dunson, Ethan Larbi, Ashley Lazaro and Emanuel Wiley speak about Folayemi Wilson’s
Dark Matter: Celestial Objects as Messengers of Love in These Troubled Times at Hyde Park Art Center, March 31 – July 14, 2019

Found Gestures, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, archive material