The apparatus of Tableau vivant and the gesture in Faz que Vai (2015) by Barbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca

Abstract

There is a generalized “will to move” in photographic images (gifs, boomerangs and videos of very short duration are the most visible symptom of this phenomenon), as well as a progressive staticity of moving images. This phenomenon can be investigated from the recurrent and updated use of Tableau Vivant’s practice in contemporary photography and cinema, as well as in the hybrid practices of video art. The question I raise derives from the perception of this phenomenon, articulated to the place of “gesture” in contemporary culture. If we start from the assumption that the progressive mechanization of modernity has resulted in the feeling of the loss of the gesture, in what way can the moving image restore it, as Agamben suggests? And how do the current contemporary hybrid images, in this case the work Faz que Vai (2015), by Barbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, actualize this question?

Keywords
Gesture; tableau vivant; video installation; Barbara Wagner