Between the closed fist and the brake: notes on contrary gestures, politics of attention, and fabulation

Abstract

Based on the encounter between two images – a fragment of a photograph of a boy enslaved during the Brazilian imperial period and a video of a Palestinian child breakdancing in Gaza – this article proposes a reflection on regimes of visibility and their relationship to contemporary lethargy in the face of barbarism. Engaging with authors such as Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, Susan Buck-Morss, Frantz Fanon, and Denise Ferreira da Silva, the text problematizes modern anesthesia as a numbing of collective sensibility and explores how art can challenge such regimes, stablishing critical cadences and opening cracks in perception. Thus, it proposes the notion of a counter-gesture as a field of invention and political fabrication, capable of mobilizing sensibilities. Initially, it discusses the production of rhythms of contemporary life, work, and death; secondly, it proposes a performative writing that articulates pause, movement, gaze, and perception, questioning how art can compose a pedagogy of gesture.