The Gesture of the Statue

In this paper I attempt to discuss the role of gesture in cinema, specifically in the analysis and interpretation of statues within film with an eye to Agamben’s theories on gesture. Just as Agamben argues the key role of gesture and the necessity of its restoration through the cinematic art to the age that has replaced gestures with representations, I intend to show that replacing image with gesture, or rather cracking the image open to reveal the gesture within vastly influences our perception of film and the works of art that it contains. I am particularly interested in the implementations of statues in films since the sculpture is the perfect instance of a gesture frozen in time and implemented in movies merely as an image. I believe dissecting the frozen gesture of the statue will provide a more concrete understanding of what it means to reveal gestures within images and representations.

Keywords:

“Sculpture” , “Gesture” , “Moving image” , “Giorgio Agamben” , “Antonin Artaud” , “Future Clone” , “Fritz Scholder”