Our project has implications in the Humanities, but also in another set of academic disciplines and clinical practices. On the one hand, the current proposal aims at the study of the role played by gestures in the configuration and the formation of emotional, religious and political communities. On the other, we seek to have an impact on other disciplinary fields, like Medical Humanities, as our previous work has already shown.
GENERAL OBJECTIVE 1: EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES AND THEIR CONCEALMENT.
Our first ambition is to understand how gestures can be used as a source of deception or concealment, exaggeration and disguise. To do so, we will concentrate on expressions of physical pain and emotional suffering as part of a forgotten history of gestural lies. We will analyze the physical concealment of experiences in three different areas: the political, the biomedical, and the cultural. More in particular, we will examine practices of exaggeration, mimicking, and simulation, especially with regard to the history of love and pain, as well as its forms of concealment and exaggeration in the world of dance and sport.
Velázquez, Marte, 1638, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
DECEIVING UTTERANCES AND FEIGNED EXPRESSIONS
We will focus on different case studies with the idea to shed some light on the general relation between emotions and expressions. In particular, we plan to examine the expression of failure (Garrocho), the industries of happiness and the capitalist use of smile and the submissive modeling (Cabanas), the experience of literary female subjectivity (De la Parra), the rituals of grief (Somalo), the gestures related to the experience of boredom (Ros), and the expression of shame or pudor (Johnson). In addition, we also aim to supervise a PhD on the expressions of pain in sport and/or in theatre and dance.
UNCONSCIOUSS VS LEARNED GESTURES
This objective focuses on non- ritualized gestural practices associated with the production and circulation of emotional standards (Moscoso, Cabanas,). We will explore three different types of gestures that have received very limited academic attention: fainting, whose history is still to be written (Scalese y De la Parra); kissing (including love bites) (González Mozo, Moscoso), and blushing, either in real life or in theatre (Johnson)
Salomon de Bray, Jael, Deborah and Barak, 1635, Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht.
GENERAL OBJECTIVE 2:
EMOTIONAL CONTAGION AND POLITICAL GESTURES.
We aim to explore emotional expressions in discursive rhetoric and political action. Since emotions are not simply (ritually) taught, but also (culturally) learned, we will investigate the rules that govern the mechanisms related to the production of shared political gestures within given emotional communities. In our view, this latter expression requires a dynamic approach. Emotional communities, defined as social groups with shared emotional standards, based their success in mechanisms of emotional osmosis and social sympathy.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
EMOTIONAL CONTAGION
We will explore the contagion of bodily states and corporal gestures from the point of view of its cultural representations and symbolic practices (Somalo, Núñez, Macsotay). For one thing, we will consider images as rhetoric devices that play a key role in our understanding of the cultural history of the arts, including the formation of canonical figures. In this case, we will explore three instances of gestural contagion. Josefa Ros Velasco, an expert in Boredom Studies, will investigate the representation of gestures traditionally associated to boredom in pictorial art, such as yawning or holding the chin in the palm of the hand. Ana González Mozo, a Museum del Prado curator, will explore the representation of kiss and kissing in the Renaissance art of Southern Italy. Javier Moscoso will concentrate on the case of those XVth century German nuns who, according Zimmerman (1784), begun an epidemic of biting which spread well beyond the walls of the convent. Finally, Laura de la Parra will focus on the history of purely feminine gestures, and Fabio Scalese will deal with the forgotten history of fainting, as both a medical and social gesture.
COLLECTIVE GESTURES
We will explore the intersection of the history of emotions and political history in relation to the reiterative nature of certain gestures that systematically appear over and over again throughout history, regardless of the cultural or political framework. These are generally ritualized gestures, usually linked to scatological or highly sexualized expressions, which appear especially in times of crisis and uncertainty. Close to an insult and aimed at warding off or producing fear, they are often accompanied by equally stereotyped expressions of resentment, hatred, or threats. In the case of gestures of social conflict, this project will focus particularly on the production of gestures of defeat or victory, which will be analyzed by Manuel Lucena Giraldo and Diego Garrocho
GESTURES OF RESISTANCE
This objective focuses on a forgotten aspect in the history of sexual abuse. The gestures of resistance of the victims of rape or abuse have been historically related to the judicial proofs required to demonstrate the lack of resistance. Our Research Group counts with two young scholars, Pamela Loera and Lorena Santos who work on the history of rape and pederasty. They will be in charge to carry out a join-research on this issue. The question leading their research will be to determine how gestures of aggression and resistance, and the social perception of this gestures, have changed over time.
CLINICAL GESTURES
We will examine the social tension between the subjective and objective dimension of some human experiences, in particular the history of emotional conditions related to forms of clinical examination. To do this, we count with the practical expertise of three members of our Research Team: Vicente Palop, Patricia Roth, and Blanca Folch. For the study of Clinical Gestures, we count with the patronage of Ribera Salud. We will organize a Workshop on Clinical Gestures in its Headquarters in Madrid. As a result, we will also produce a small documentary and few podcasts. All costs of this SO6 will be part of the Ribera-CSIC Cooperation agreement.
El Bosco, Extracción de la piedra de la locura, 1501 - 1505, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Ruth Somalo (Director). (2020). La flor triste [Film]. Horns and Tails Productions
%2C_Artemisia_Gentileschi.jpg)
Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders, 1610, Castillo Weissenstein, Pommersfelden.
GENERAL OBJECTIVE 3: PHILOSOPHY OF EXPERIENCE and HISTORY OF GESTURES.
As in the more general case of the history of emotional experience, we also understand that the history of its bodily expressions requires intense theoretical work, capable of overcoming the limitations inherent to the lack of sources or conceptual rigor. The incorporation to our research team of philosophers such as Diego Garrocho, as co-PI, as well as other academics and other scholars from related fields (Cabanas, or Fragio), will allow to build a general theory of emotional expressions.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE
This project aims to propose a new theoretical framework for the study of gestures so that, together with the case studies, we will be able to establish general conclusions in which other contributions from cultural history or art history can be framed. More specifically, we propose the publication of at least 3 articles of impact (Fragio, Garrocho, Moscoso, Mcsotay, et al.), preceded by an international workshop co-organized with the Cultural History group of the UAM. The provisional title of the workshop (WS1) will be Metonymic History (how to write the history of the irrelevant?)
José de Ribera, La visión de Baltazar, 1635.
GENERAL OBJECTIVE 4: KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER OBJECTIVES.
Our Research Group has already a long history of cooperation with public and private companies, both national and international. Our network supports different forms of knowledge transfer (KT), in line with the European culture of the 21st century. As in many other Research Centers, HISTEX aims to combine scientific excellence and social relevance. In particular we cooperate regularly with the Wellcome Collection (London), Ribera Salud (Valencia), La Caixa Foundation (Barcelona and Madrid), El Círculo de Bellas Artes (CBA), La Térmica (Málaga), The Science Gallery (Dublin), Mapfre Foundation (Madrid), or the El Prado Museum (Madrid). We are also part of the working group on Medical Humanities launched by the Wellcome Collection in 2017, in cooperation with the Medical Museum of Copenhagen. In this case, our project has found support from the following institutions and Companies: The Prado Museum, Ribera Salud, Medical Museum of Copenhagen, Círculo de Bellas Artes, and the Center for Creative Industries of Orange County, California, the film producer Horns and Tails, or La Gata Greta event production.
Ruth Somalo (Director). (2017). Consulta 32 [Film]. Horns and Tails Productions
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
PROOF OF CONCEPT
When it comes to finding reiterative elements in gestural dynamics, our project makes use of the tools provided by the Digital Humanities. What Koselleck called "structures of repetition" resembles the emotional formulas (Pathosformeln) investigated by Warburg in the early days of iconography. This concept of Pathosformel can take on a new meaning when supported by gestural identification algorithms (Impett & Süsstrunk, 2016). Digital Humanities have recovered the idea of the objectification of emotion as a pose that can be traced in the whole of a given iconographic corpus (Impett 2020). We intend to establish a proof of concept, that is to say: to trace by means of an algorithm the elements of a given gesturality, which we are going to refer in this case to gestures of resistance or acceptance of sexual advance, so that we can find elements of gestural similarity but also of disambiguation in the context of 16th and 17th century painting. To carry out this proof of concept we will have the collaboration of the Museo del Prado, already represented in our Research Team.
EXHIBITIONS
There has not been a HISTEX research project that has not been accompanied by an exhibition. Especially remarkable were the cases of PAIN. PASSION COMPASSION SENSIBILITY, which opened at the Science Museum in London, and SKIN, which took place at the Wellcome Collection, also in London. The data concerning the number of visitors in both cases was overwhelming: 200,000 in the first and more than 80,000 in the second, becoming the most visited exhibition at the Wellcome Collection for many years. In this case, we plan three exhibitions:
-
In 2023, Marina Núñez, (MN) an artis of international renown, will have a solo exhibition at the Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid, as well as several national and international group exhibitions. In these exhibitions she will contend that gestures, which can be exaggerated, expressing clear and often stereotyped thoughts or emotions, can also be extremely revealing, like in a hieratic face in which something minimal is moving. In her latest productions, such as "Skinless" or "Simbiosis (droseras)", both from 2022, Marina Núñez represents characters whose subtle variations of skin (of its texture, of its tensions) trace, among other things, the character or the conjunctural feeling of their protagonists.
-
Following Moscoso's research on the global history of swing, we have been offered to put together an exhibition on the culture and history of balance and imbalance in medicine and art at the Medical Museum in Copenhagen. This would be the first major exhibition, both nationally and internationally, dedicated to the history of the most forgotten of all senses: the sense of equilibrium.
-
Some of the results of this research project will be presented through an on-line exhibition, as part of our webpage.
DOCUMENTARY
As a result of our success with "Consulta 32" —a HISTEX produced documentary on Fibromyalgia patients released in 2017— we plan a second one, on the cultural dimension of crying. THE TEAR PROJECT, as we have name it, will be a documentary film, in HD Video format, about the historical and cultural use of tears. By helping us reflect on our emotional triggers, this film will take the form of a poetic essay that will attempt to explore what it means and what makes us cry. Multidisciplinary in nature, this project will start from the contributions of the natural sciences to the study of tears, combining elements and perspectives of cultural anthropology, history or sociology of the emotions. After all, tears are a biological necessity, but not all tears are the same. There are basal tears, which keep the eyes lubricated, reflex tears, which occur when we peel onions, for example, and emotional tears. The latter differ from the others even at the chemical level. Nor are they a mere response to physical pain or spiritual suffering. On the contrary, one of the purposes of this project is to consider the normative boundaries of crying.
Marina Núñez. (2023). Botánica 1.
Marina Núñez. (2017). Un cuerpo extraño.
Ruth Somalo (Director). (2015). Eusebio, el americano [Film]. Horns and Tails Productions