Scriptings #14: The Nondescript of Our Gestures

“Placing things like gestures in space. Arranging things with hands, bringing them together for a time: in the dilapidated Parisian shops in Les Halles that are desperately trying to make their façades presentable again, I find a correspondence in a library, ‘I received your letter … read it again and again, dear friend, signed Fernand Deligny, November 16, 1968.’ And the title of an unknown film I had never heard of: Le Moindre Geste. That’s right, Achim, that’s actually how it should be when we, I, make things—preserving, discovering, guiding the slightest, smallest, indescribable, cautious, most nondescript gestures. Looking further—a large, beautiful book, printed in French on extremely thin paper; that’s what there is of the author. Not so much in German, of course: from Merve (as usual) a volume from the seventies: Ein Floß in den Bergen (en.: A Raft in the Mountains). A book that lies, like a discarded teddy bear, sequestered in storage at the university library in Innsbruck (with places, I also change books), so that it is no longer possible to access its worn-out greenery. I have, however, gotten my hands onto one passage:

‘It happens that a certain drifting gesture—geste de dérive—suddenly becomes a guiding gesture—geste dérive—which is as much a gesture as a thing. The most non-descript of our gestures is initially a thing and the unassuming thing can conjure an entire world of gestures.’ (quote: Fernand Deligny, Ein Floß in den Bergen, Merve 1979)”
Achim Lengerer

Achim LENGERER is an artist based in Berlin and Amsterdam. In his work he deals with questions of language, which he realizes in performances or in installations. He has initiated several collaborative projects including Freitagsküche in Frankfurt and Berlin and voiceoverhead, a collaboration with artist Dani Gal. He has been running Scriptings, a traveling exhibition space and publishing house, since 2009. Scriptings functions as a discursive platform, building on and running parallel to Lengerer’s projects. Scriptings is open to artists, writers, graphic designers, performers and publishers—all those who make use of “script” and “text” formats in their respective production processes.
www.scriptings.net

Location

University of Innsbruck
Innrain 52
6020 Innsbruck