I have not read Agamben's work, but I am interested in this concept of
gesture.
The power of cinema is that, in Agamben's words, it=
> 'leads images back to the homeland of gestures'. [5] If cinema leads us=
> back to gestures then it also leads us back to ethics and politics, but not=
> to aesthetics. According to Agamben, the gesture is a particular type of=
> action -- it is neither about acting or making, producing or action, but=
> instead about enduring and supporting. It is neither a means in view of an=
> end, nor an end without a means, it is means as such.
Since Agamben has edited and translated Walter Benjamin, I wonder if by
"gesture" he is referring to I'm more familiar with in Brecht's concept of
"gestus." Brecht was very concerned with the stage actor finding the best
expressive and performative form for political expression: one which could
express contradiction and change.
Gesture, of course, is fundamental to stage acting, and was taken over,
particularly in the melodramatic tradition, in narrative film acting:
precisely why silent film acting (in D. W. Griffith, say) often seems so
gestural to contemporary audiences.
> One example of this could be the well-known scene from Krzysztof=
> Kieslowski's _Three Colours: Blue_ (1993) of the lump of sugar being=
> dissolved in the coffee cup.
And how would this compare to the equally well known extreme close up of
sugar cubes being dripped in a cup of coffee in Godard's Two Or Three Things
I Know About Her, accompanied by Godard's whispered philosophical
commentary?
Chuck Kleinhans
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