At the invitation of the Simone Weil Denkkollektiv/Berlin, Fraktalwerk travelled to Geneva in the spring of 2026, to the Pavillon Simone Weil, to participate with several works in the temporary social sculpture and art installation by the artist Thomas Hirschhorn. Over several days, the dancer and choreographer Libertad Esmeralda Iocco presented dance performances on the theme of labour, gravity, and gesture.
For Simone Weil, gravity is closely linked to the physical and social reality of human labour. She experienced physical factory work first-hand as the pure, undisguised execution of this gravity: the hardness of the material, the pressure of time, the exhaustion, and the degradation of being reduced to a mere tool.
Labour, Gravity, and Dream
Libertad Esmeralda Iocco’s dance performances in the Simon Weil Pavilion depict the “afternoon of an endless day”. A woman, a chair – and everyday functional gestures: the rhythmic typing on a typewriter, the pushing back and forth of the chair. They show the exhausting labour which, interrupted only by fitness exercises to maintain working capacity, knows no other pause than collapsing onto the chair and sliding down to the floor.
When the dancer eventually steps out of her boiler suit, takes off her yellow hard hat, and begins to dance in her leotard, these are different movements… Perhaps it is due to the edit of several dances, but it almost seems as though the exhausted woman, whom the chair can barely hold, is dreaming…
The Gesture: An Investigation
In Libertad Esmeralda Iocco’s performance The Afternoon of an Endless Day, a movement appears for a brief moment that differs from the otherwise incorporated everyday gestures. The dancer raises her right arm and extends it vertically upwards. Her index finger is also extended. For a moment, the posture of another performer emerges, who is also presenting her series of performances on the garage campus. The dancer resonates with the artistic work of Marlen Wagner, which the latter pursues in her performance series “This is Not a Pointing Gesture!” (…)
At first, the gesture appears in its familiar form. The arm rises. The finger points upwards. (…) The moment the observers understand the gesture, Libertad Esmeralda Iocco alters it. The finger remains extended, but its direction shifts. It no longer points upwards. It describes a small movement and directs itself towards the dancer’s own head. For a moment, the pointing turns into a redirection. The gesture no longer refers to something outside, but to the person executing it. Shortly afterwards, it dissolves again and disappears into the flow of the remaining movements.
It is precisely this small shift that shows: the gesture is not used as a sign. (…) The gesture is investigated.
Robert Krokowski, Signature and Gesture, 2026 (Excerpt)