Brief Atlas of Work

The images in this publication were captured during a video call between two friends, on March 31, 2021. Marcelo in the city of Itatiaia, in the countryside of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Me, in Helsinki, Finland. We started with a script of questions and improvisation games. We were alone with our computers, at home, wearing our Sunday clothes. At a certain point, I asked Marcelo to propose images for the camera in response to a list of words. This was a provisional and arbitrary list made by me, under the theme “labor.” For his compositions, he could use only his own body, the space, and a few objects, only those at hand. All images were improvised under a strictly limited time. These gesture-scenes, or image-translations, are not intended to be definitive nor complete definitions of the words from my list. On the contrary, they are spontaneous insurrections within the circumstances of that encounter. Instant revelations of the conventions of meaning we embody, added to the inventions and subversions we came with together in that language game. In summary, I ask: what could be the differences between saying and showing?