Annotation:
One Gesture / Wojtek Ziemilski & Wojciech Pustoła
Grand opening of the 2018 Bazaar Festival
Motus, producers of the Alfred ve dvoře Theatre present, in cooperation with the Ponec Theatre the grand opening performance of the 2018 Bazaar Festival, a show about sign languages. It is an award-winning show about communicating with the world – with the world of the hearing and with the world of the Deaf. How does communication work? How are knowledge, emotion and culture transmitted, produced and processed? If language is the only reality we have access to (“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” – as Wittgenstein said), what can we learn about the world from the languages of the Deaf? What is universal about their experience of communicating, and what is unique? And how come none of my friends have any Deaf friends?
„Here is one thing that fascinates me: I don’t know how to talk about it. My words seem clumsy and awkward. The language I use seems inadequate to describe sign languages and the world of the Deaf in general. To give some substance to my words, let me cite a number of truisms from the collection Truisms by Jenny Holzer, an American neoconceptual artist. These phrases seem the simplest thing there is. Until you look at them from the standpoint of sign language:
Listen when your body talks.
People who don’t work with their hands are parasites.
Words tend to be inadequate.
Description is more important than metaphor.
Abstraction is a type of decadence.
You are responsible for constituting the meaning of things.“
