Started in 1995, this project oscillating between cinema and the visual arts is a repository of everyday gestures – made by hands in particular – such as brushing one’s hair, leafing through a book, cleaning one’s nails, peeling a chestnut, clapping one’shands, digging a hole, and pulling off laurel leaves. The sequences, shot in Super 8, repeat a single gesture in an endless loop like so many “silent figures.” In filming these gestures of women, men, children and the elderly, Natacha Nisic observes a way of being, a particular articulation of gestures and language, gestures and work, gestures and everyday practice. Each one was filmed only at the place where the activity was carried out.
The Catalogue de Gestes forms an open-ended database.
Fragments of the Catalog
comb your hair, leaf through a book, clean your nails, peel a chestnut, clap your hands, dig a hole, pluck leaves from a laurel tree, rub your hands together, cut small pieces of orange, swim breaststroke, draw a line with chalk, sewing with black thread, wiping condensation from a window, drawing a line on skin….
The Catalogue of Gestures is dedicated to Resad Nisic
