Zir·kel (German for compass) is an on-going and open-ended collaborative project with Vanessa Enriquez for which we use the most readily available drawing tool we have: our own bodies.
We experiment with a series of gestural inscriptions and erasures using chalk on blackboards. Each piece entails a sequence of a minimum of three types of circular bodily movements defined by structured decision-making, using a matrix of variables of motion and form. The blackboards allow us not only to construct areas proportional to our own reach and size — a key element in the conceptual structure of the work –, but also to experiment freely and learn from the process through a never-ending response to each other and the material, resulting in a graphical grammar of motion and notation.
Through the exploration of angles, rotations, extents and limitations of our body articulations and positions, we map and superimpose our particularities and differences. Each drawing not only is a fertile ground to study gesture and composition, but also becomes a space of negotiation. In this way, Zirkel acts as a device for measuring, anchoring, navigating and locating.
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In the context of our exhibition at the Embassy of Mexico in Berlin (April 4 – May 11, 2012), Zirkel 1.0 presented five impermanent drawings performed on site, a series of photographs of our first 28 experiments, a stop-motion video documenting our method, and the notation system that will continue to be developed, re-calibrated and adapted as we keep introducing new types of movements into our shared practice.
