Recipes for Wayfinding

Offered by Sharda, Celine, Tingli and Alecia

‍

Our collective score Recipes for Wayfinding emerged from the workshopping process and our memories and lived experiences during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. These gestures carry our anxieties and circumstances of living with prolonged uncertainty and stresses while expressing our deep desire for connection, release and hope for the future. 

‍

Feel free to use our gestures as a starting point and bring in your own experiences. You may repeat or rearrange our gestures to assemble your own score. When in doubt, improvise! 

‍

‍

Collective Score 

‍

Tentative square

Tentative feet

Stepping out into the Unknown (circles)

Skip-hop (circle)

A-void-dance¹

A punctuation of ending

Standing Cradle

Walking Cradle

Heart Reach (longing heart)

Abhaya Mudra²

Resting on the horizon³ (30 sec)

Circling hands

Brushstrokes

Sisyphus (moving forward, moving back)

Exhaustive Shields

A-void-dance

Struggle-release

Punctuation of an ending

Starfish (Stationary instead of open vulnerability/close safety)

Foetus Position (Comfort/Womb)

Reclining (breastfeeding)⁴

Submission (prostration)

Traveller’s stop⁵

Hello/goodbye (beginning and endings of relationship)

Backwalk

‍

¹ Inspired by Karen Barad’s essay on radical hospitality, “After the End of the World: Entangled Nuclear Colonialisms, Matters of Force, and the Material Force of Justice”

² Tibetan Nuns Project’s article on Mudras: Meaning of Sacred Hand Gestures.

³ Drawn from Alecia Neo’s 2012 artwork Resting on the Horizon. 

⁴ Breastfeeding positions

⁵ The Islamic faith considers every person as a traveller, passing through life on earth as part of the journey before returning to the ultimate home above (Sahih Al Bukhari 1: Chapter 82, Hadith 6416). Celine uses this gesture to express a temporal rest stop before continuing to the final destination.