“Performance is a practice and an epistemology, a creative doing, a methodological lens, a way of transmitting memory and identity, and a way of understanding the world.” (Taylor, 2015, p. 39)
This practice deploys gestural analysis to investigate power dynamics in the everyday acts as defined by the social construct of gender. It is based on performative methodologies which processes data using motion-based technologies to decontextualize the social reality and upend the hierarchies of gender in relation to culture.
The gestural analysis utilizes motion-based technology to synthesize and analyze captured data of the everyday human choreography. Data is captured through field and netnographic research. Process and translate data on captured bodies across a variety of immersive and Ai technologies to map the power dynamics and reach insights. The insights turn into critical speculative, theoretical design artifacts. Project Right to Left, Left to Right, designs speculative cooking tools for a particular recipe to open up a conversation on the cultural implication with the delegation of roles to the right and left hand. And shares the instructions through a Youtube tutorial. Reference for possible installations of this approach: Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest, The House Alice Built - design gallery their installation provides a methodological activation of emancipatory ideas and practices to reshape our shared spaces.
“Gender is not something we have, but something we do, a system of often invisibilized or normalized acts, product of a strict regime of socialization. Pronouncing “It’s a girl!” during an ultrasound or at the birth, thus, is not simply a statement; it’s a discursive form of initiation into a entire way of acting and being.” (Butler, 1990)
Gender is a colonial concept, as it is defined by patriarchy and heteronormativity, and gender roles are structured under this mission to undermine and enslave the entities that are not identified as Western male (Garcia, 2012, p.108). This practice is against the idea of gender and is interested in analyzing the construction of social roles through the gender socialization of institutions such as media, popular culture and religion for the emancipation of the body.
This practice aligns in between communities with gender issues and the other end of the spectrum of performance arts. Communicate in between to reveal the invisible power dynamics between genders and heal oppressed bodies through gestural awareness. This is a collaborative design practice that believes in a multidisciplinary vision on gender roles and believes in the need for the experts from diverse fields to create impact on social norms. This practice aims to formulate concepts to allow for new gestural connections and relations among gendered bodies. In that it provides the ground on which might engage social and political forms of performative communication within our cultures.