Hands Up

HANDS UP is a performance by Tyler Cunningham and Emilia Dorr that constructs a plaster museum of real and imagined "hands-up" gestures to conjure the ghosts still waiting to tell their stories of political unrest. By creating an archive of hands-up gestures and the stories in which these gestures appear, the performance exchanges the concept of accuracy in historical narratives for something embodied, fluid and deeply personal. In this way, the hands-up gesture becomes a call for an alternative future, bringing stories of resistance that are in danger of being forgotten or erased into the present.