Through her practice, artist, author, and cultural worker Elske Rosenfeld researches the history of dissidence in Eastern Europe and beyond, focusing in particular on the events of 1989 and 1990. In her ongoing online-offline research project A vocabulary of revolutionary gestures, Rosenfeld assembles embodied gestures found in historical instances of revolt and political rupture, reflecting on their specific political forms and contents. The artist challenges the idea of the linearity of history and progressive transformations by collecting and reflecting on circular and helical aesthetics of political participation across global movements. She explores the way the geometry of political gatherings, like the movements of protesters along circular routes, or the so-called Round Table assemblies in the GDR in 1989/90, aspire to specific political formations, such as collective and non-hierarchical modes of action and decision-making. In her video installation Another Round (2012/2022), as part of the gesture Circling, Rosenfeld records uninterrupted footage of herself and a friend circling Tahrir Square in Cairo during the 2012, as the Arab Spring protests were winding down. Their orbit around the square shows them in constant forward movement but like the remaining protestors, whose camp the camera captures, they also seem unable or unwilling to leave this revolutionary time-space behind.

Work in the exhibition: Archive of Gestures: Circling (Another Round) / Umkreisen (Noch eine Runde) (2012/2022), metal frame, colour video with sound, 9′. Courtesy of the artist