Metaphors of Work

This project investigates how language theory, visual communication design, and performance art can contribute to the comprehension and representation of work.

I have set out to make an inventory of the abstract concepts that orbit our general understanding of work. These words are used and understood in our daily lives through a complex network of metaphoric implications. Eventually, I also became interested in intervening within these metaphors, proposing bodily interpretations of words in order to dissect, amplify, and challenge their meanings.

I formatted a simple procedure for a practical experiment. It consisted of a script with seven language-based games, conceived to be executed by volunteer performers. The games were carried out inside a photographic studio, with the presence of a photographer who documented the sessions.

An experiment between saying and showing

The exercises were tailored to navigate through memory, convention, invention, and collaboration. The task could perhaps be described as an exercise of translation, as in the conversion of concepts from their verbal form into a gestural-visual form.

When words are converted into gestures, they are reintroduced to the domain of vagueness, of uncertainty. In this domain, different aspects compete for our attention. We must engage in speculative interpretations – we are actively mapping aspects. This procedure restores the oddity we had lost in these words. It stimulates a curious suspicion, that of seeing something for the first time.

This specific kind of gesture is nurtured by language; it is neither the absolutely abstract flow of movement nor blatant pantomime. It is a defined and inventive proposition that can become an open signifier – an open-ended model, a master key to infinite doors.