After having gathered a substantial number of images and videos about handshakes between politicians I started to organise, compare and contrast them.

At this point my intention is to break down the total greeting into separate and discrete movements in order to analyse them individually. Ultimately, this dichotomy between the bigger picture and the minute details contributes to unravel the hidden significance behind each motion.

The theorical treatise by Francois Del Sarte titled System of oratory (1887) started to inform my way to navigate the data I collected. Particularly, the imaginary cube he theorised has been extremely valuable to comprehend some basic features of the power dynamics embedded through the gesture of shaking hands. Other taxonomies revolving around the topic of body language, gestures and hands, developed by authors who range from the 17^th century to the 20^th century, have also been a solid source of information and inspiration to conduct my own investigation. The first documented methodical catalogue of hand gestures dates back to 1644, and it is the work Chirologia, or the Natural Language of the Hand, by Jonathan Balwer. The book offers a wide depiction of gestures related to a specific meaning. Other noteworthy operas are Chironomia (1806) by Gilbert Austin and A Manual of Gestures (1875) by Albert Bacon.

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A more recent attempt to provide a classification of gestures is The supplement to the Italian dictionary (1963) by the polyhedric graphic designer Bruno Munari. Munari analyses a series of typical ingrained Italian gestures and suggests a brief explanation as well as an objective and concise description for each of them.

Lastly, a project that has heavily influenced my practice in the last few months is the book Decoding Dictatorial Statues (2019) by the researcher and graphic designer Ted Hyunhak Yoon. Starting in 2014 as part of his final project at Royal College of Arts, Yoon has built an image archive of dictators’ statues. Yoon interest was to investigate the power of their body language. “A hand tucked into a pocket”, “A hand raised forward”, “Fingers spread flat or palms facing up”, A knee with a book resting on it”, “A foot frozen in marble, taking a decisive step forward”. The non-verbal rhetoric that shapes statues is undeniable.

When I came across Yoon’s work, I was amazed by the multitude of tangent points which connect my investigation to his research. Beyond some visible similarities with the subject of the analysis, I believe that the methodology that Yoon employs is very much relatable to my research. I was gladly impressed to ascertain how some of the choices that I intuitively took following the progression of my iterations, where already indicated in the path proposed by Yoon’s project. Therefore, the more I was looking into Yoon’s practice, the more it started to inform my subsequent steps. The first aspect that caught my attention is Yoon’s professional background. He is a graphic designer and consequently the research he conducts is solidly shaped by the tools and schemes of graphic design. The role he suggests for himself is designer as a content maker, in the sense that through his research he sheds new light on the analysed topic and contributes to create new knowledge. Something else I found very enlightening is that most of the historical manuals about gestures I encountered throughout my investigation are forming the base of references for Yoon’s project too. In his case the taxonomy of gestures is used to interpret the significance behind statues’ poses. Yoon eventually proposed the insights gained in his research adopting a wide range of mediums and outputs. One that I consider very appropriate and comprehensive is the performance where, through the use of a spherical structure he designed, he depicts the multitude of virtuous gestures performed by the statues.

I also acknowledge the fact the there is one main substantial difference between the subject of my analysis and Yoon’s topic. Collecting still images is appropriate in Yoon’s case since the statues are invariable matters, whereas the handshakes by their nature are elusive and mutable. For this reason I believe that the video material is more suitable because it shows the movement and the choreography of handshakes in its entirety and its whole evolution, whereas the still images freeze the movement in a specific moment which eventually doesn’t capture the complexity of the event.

Inspired by Munari’s approach and by Yoon’s methodical process, I decided to produce a short impersonal description for each of the different gestures of the political greetings taken from my video archive. The descriptions eventually took on the appearance of a sort of script with a succession of instructions.

TRUMP AND MACRON BIARRITZ FRANCE G7 SUMMIT 24 AUGUST 2019

1. B walks towards A while smiling
2. B offers their right hand to A with the palm perpendicular to the ground and the thumb pointing upwards
3. A grasps B’s hand, and they start to shaking hands vigorously.
4. A and B exchange a few inaudible words
5. B grips A’s upper arm with their left hand and applies light pressure
6. A points towards B with their left index finger
7. B lifts their left hand away from A’s upper arm and raises their left thumb from their fist

MACRON AND NARENDRA MODI CHANTILLY PALACE NEAR PARIS 22 AUGUST 2019

1. A and B briskly walk towards each other
2. B lifts their right forearm and points their hand perpendicular to the ground towards A
3. A and B join hands and hold them in the centre
4. A and B lean towards each other and wrap their arms around each other’s backs
5. B places his left arm on top of A’s right arm and vice versa
6. A’s head is close to B’s right shoulder and vice versa
7. A and B pat each other’s back multiple times
8. A and B lean their heads back, facing each other, still embracing
9. A and B switch side, this time A’s head close B’s left shoulder and vice versa.

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Finally, I decided to stage a performance using the script as a prompt. The two performers are called to re-enact the instructions, which a narrating voice is giving to them, in real time. The performers do not know in advance which movements they have to play, but rather, they must be flexible to re-adjust their actions spontaneously following the directions. I believe this method reflects the dynamism of the phenomenon of handshakes and allows us to see it in its whole complexity as a dialectical relationship and a dynamic performance. Furthermore, having the gestures divided into a sequence makes it possible to appreciate each single movement and extrapolate it from the fluid choreography of the handshake.

I arranged a script for each of the greetings I analysed among the G20 world Leaders, but I believe that it would be more interesting if I eventually end up with a series of scripts where I merge cliched gestures from different politicians, in order to achieve an ideal model of sorts of the political handshake. Eventually, one could recognise a particular move that is related to Trump or a specific kind of grip which is a prerogative of Macron.

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Francois Del Sarte was a French singer, orator and coach who, in the mid 1800s, developed a system of oratory techniques to teach actors, politicians, priests, orators and public speakers how to take advantege of gestures and body language to amplify the meaning of their spoken words. Del Sarte was interested in the relationships between physical behavior, emotion, and language and his aim was to indentify a sort of model which could explain scientific principles of expression. Del sarte exploration involved the body in its integrity, but a specific attention is dedicated to the hands. In particular, Del Sarte theorised the attitudes pof the hands through an imaginary cube. In front of any speaker there is a imaginary cube which could be grasped from many different angles. Each position of the hands in relation to the cube has a specific meaning according to Del Sarte. For instance, placing the hands on the upper surface of the cube may communicate possession and the speaker has control on the issue. Conversely, touching the cube from the bottom side means that the speaker is taking care of the subject.

Del Sarte’s cube model about gesticulation can be easily applied to greetings and handshakes as well. The way a politician offers their hand to the interlocutor can be seen from the cube’s prespective, so for instance a palm down approach communicates authority whereas a hand presented palm up suggests submission.

In paritular I found interesting the relation between the palm up and the idea of caring for someone, which sounds to me something very far from the political power play.

After thinking of a cheesy wordplay on the term “greetings,” I designed a series of cheesy postcards where the act of shaking hands is deprived of its original meaning and is re-contextualised.

I believe it is possible to identify, among many factors, at least two essential components contributing to shaping the way public figures (or, perhaps, everybody?) perform greetings. The first one regards the intrinsic nature of the person shaking hands – as it concerns their personality and the sum of experiences and events which have moulded their ego, it is the less tangible aspect hence the most arduous to control. We could say that this agent is operating unconsciously and represents the more spontaneous and genuine approach one may have towards greetings. The second element derives from the superstructures pressuring society. According to these forces people behave accordingly to what is deemed “most appropriate” based on their position within society. Contrary to the former component described above, people are mostly aware of this latter element – i.e. the network of social expectations and structures that organize life. Hence, being aware of how different greetings carry different societal meanings and implications, they are quick at adapting adapt their greetings in response to varying environments and circumstances.

As to delineate a theoretical framework which we need to make sense of greetings as performative acts of political power displays, we could say that the first component is an endogenous factor, whereas the latter one is exogenous. It might also be argued that someone’s personality traits have been shaped throughout time by external stimuli – this however is the thoroughly debated “nurture vs nature” dilemma, which however sits outside the scope of this paper. Hence, for the sake of the reasoning at issue, we will consider all traits ingrained in one’s individuality, their “essential characteristics” we shall say, as internal and relatively stable – i.e. unaffected by the external circumstances.

A clarifying example may be worthwhile describing as to dispel any doubt. Let us consider Donald Trump: his personal history, what he represents in the American culture, the way he speaks and how he poses himself – one would opine that his famously intimidatory handshake is a natural manifestation of these traits, i.e. of his personality. Nonetheless, the fact that he was the president of the First World Power adds new values and reading levels to his attempt to prevail on his interlocutor in the had-shaking moment. Therefore, we could hypothesize that the reason why Trump greets people in such an idiosyncratic way is not only a planned strategy dictated by his influential position, but also an authentic and sincere expression of his state of being.

As it became evident, the boundary between these two perspectives of looking at handshakes is quite blurred. They often overlap and concurrently participate to outline the performance of greeting. Because of this fluid dualism a further layer of complexity is added to this phenomenon. In Laser’s art piece the choreography of gestures employed by the politicians assumes the form of a uninterrupted stream; it is seamless and it does not envisage any counter-reply as it is displayed during a speech, hence an occasion where the orator is the only active player. This fundamental feature is the reason why Laser’s transposition of the speeches to body language expressions only is so effective and powerfully conveys the critical position of the artist. In the case of the handshake, conversely, we witness a dynamic performance where both players are readjusting their movements in real time, simultaneously intending to convey their personal intensions while attempting to navigate their “gestural interlocutor”. A strong capacity to improvise is required by the players – often, both actors attempt to prevail, and this leads to an awkward and mute power-play, where the handshake appears to be unspontaneous, clumsy and embarrassing as it lasts too long as neither party wants to loosen their grip. Commenting her project, Laser underlines the issue of the performance as a form of social interaction. In an interview dated […] she states:

“We are living in strange days where performance itself has become the dominant instrument of power. The style of someone’s delivery ends up foreclosing the real content. As spectator we are being treated as lab rats to be impressed. I am asking myself: Can we reclaim some agency by getting our hands on the tools of mass communication?”.Leaving aside the affirmation of the audience as test subject, which I consider a bit sensationalist and reductive of the audience’s role, I believe the most intriguing aspect of Laser’s message to be her analysis of the performance as a crucial constituent of our society, and that the performance’s persuasive power in politics has been amplified in direct correlation to the rise of mass communication. This assumption is satisfactorily expressed in Laser’s work, and I believe it perfectly applies to my investigation too. Indeed, we can easily ascertain that the photos of politicians’ handshakes present a more artificial and constructed structure compared to the ones of their predecessor from before the Second World War. (maybe I could show a picture here) Moreover, something that is not covered in Laser’s project and which emerges in my investigation is the variety of power dynamics that can be established through the performance of hand-shaking. As I previously mentioned, the performance that Laser analyses is unidirectional: from the orator to the audience, hence it involves only one kind of relationship. Instead, the phenomenon of the handshake gives form to a dialectical and mutating relationship between the two players, which eventually results in a plethora of possible dynamics of power.  

The Digital Face, analysis and interrogation of a case study

As my interest for the phenomenon of greetings in political communication started to grow and increase in complexity, I realised it was essential to find similar examples of other designers and artists’ practices revolving around the same topic, in order to get a clearer grasp on prior research in this field of study, and eventually use it to interrogate my investigation.

In particular I came across a project that really struck me, and which I believe has several intersecting points with my research. The project in question is a performance and two-channel video called The Digital Face (2012), by the New Yorker artist Liz Magic Laser. Laser’s practice focuses on questioning different ways information is organized and circulates, for example through broadcast television, news media, internet memes and newspapers. A notable area of her work is dedicated to political communication. In this context, her art piece The Digital Face offers a methodical analysis of politicians’ body language during formal speeches.

Laser, in an interview about her work (source and data), raised the common feeling that politics often seems as something too abstract, raising the question as to which message politicians actually want to convey. She selected videos of USA presidents’ orations and she muted them in order to draw attention only to the physical presence of the orator in the space, as well as their movements. The purpose was to decode the unspoken language of political rhetoric and eventually make the discourse more accessible by looking exclusively at the body language. An interesting insight that Laser gained as a result of her investigation was that the first US President to use his hands and the whole body to accompany the verbal discourse in formal speeches is George H. W. Bush.

Let us clarify this claim: Laser acknowledges that politicians before Bush were also used to gesticulating during assemblies and debates; however, it is only from Bush senior onwards that the body language starts to play such pivotal role in occasion of official and ceremonial speeches such as the State of the Union – broadcasted through television all around the country. For instance, we can see Ronald Reagan, Bush’s predecessor, in all his State of the Union from 1981 to 1988 keeping the hands completely stationary on the podium.

Starting from H.W. Bush all the Presidents have used their hands to maximize the efficiency of their speeches. It is intriguing to think that Bush’s first mandate in 1989 coincided with a historical event which changed the paradigms of our era: the fall of the Berlin wall and the disruption of the USSR. It might be worthy to investigate whether a relation between the end of the Cold War and a new way American politicians communicate exists: perhaps, due to the fact that in this era the presence and the use of television in political discourse became more significant. However, this speculation lies outside the scope of my research, but might be interesting to elaborate further in other studies.

Finally, Laser put in comparison the speech by Bush Senior at the State of Union in January 1990 with the one Obama held in January 2012. Following only their gestures, the virtuosity of their movements becomes clear. The hands trace signs in the air interacting and intertwining with each other and with the surrounding space in a hypnotic dance. The successions of gestures shape a choreography of sorts, which is thoroughly calculated in order to persuade the audience.

The two politicians have different styles of oration, which are reflected in the way they use their hands. For instance, something that Laser highlights are the idiosyncratic gestures of Bush, which (as she maintains) make him similar to a snake. He pounces quickly with no muscle coiling beforehand and he displays a series of very precise and firm movements which evolve rapidly from an apparently static stage to a very energetic and concise sign. This reflection is important because it allows us to think of the gestures as an independent portion of the discourse, which possibly helps and emphasises the comprehension of the verbal part, but it can also stand by its own potentially creating other new and different narrations.

Laser eventually worked with two performers to present the comparison of the two speeches in the Derek Eller Gallery, New York in 2012. The two performers, facing each other, were involved in a sort of silent dialogue where they were re-enacting the mimic of the two presidents’ speeches. Laser dressed the performers with a grey integral tracksuit as a further expedient to erase any difference between them and bring attention only on their movements. During the performance two cameras on a tripod were taking photos of the performers at regular intervals. Speech coaches often use the camera as a tool to dissect and perfect individual movements, and so the presence of cameras in the performance were a sort of explicit reminder that what is re-enacted is a performance. Laser finally decided to amplify the sound of the camera shutter clicking, which eventually became the soundtrack of the performance. The mechanical efficiency of the shutter reflects the proficiency of the gestures.

To be continued

Webliography (to be arranged properly):

https://lizmagiclaser.com/the-digital-face/

The intention of using an algorithm to automate the process of gathering images of greeting hands has faded away. I was not able to solve the problem I had with my code and neither the technicians of the advanced digital project’s workshop could help me (possibly in the future I will go back on this issue). Therefore, forced by circumstances I had to riconsider my approach to the project, hence to formulate another procedure to collect the data.

I decided to operate manually: I took more than 100 photos of politicians in the act of greeting each other and I started to isolate the hands using the mask tool of photoshop. I ended up with a collection of images depicting only the hands.

The hands extrapolated from their context allow us to a more meticolous investigation of the action. What could have been seen as a routine and repeated gesture before, now acquires on its own special values. The hands become the protagonist of the analysis, and inevitably we realise how a multitude of minimal micro-movements such as the position of the hand, the inclination of the palm and the span between the fingers eventually tend to shape a complete new narration. What kind of relationship is describable only by looking at the typology of handshake?

I organized my collection of images into an instagram account called hands_dialogues, a taxonomy of sorts which includes the greetings of the G20 world leaders. For each leader I analysed five greetings, and even if it is not a considerable number it already shows some similarities and recurring poses, which we can suppose are typical of a specific leader.

Link of the account ↓

https://www.instagram.com/hands_dialogues/

I gave to the images the same visual treatment so the focus is only addressed to the gesture itself.

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The sensation is of staring at a series of hands which look all the same: those hands could belong to anyone. The use of tags to label the hands completely changes this paradigm so we know those two hands shaking are rispectively Ursula von der Leyen and Pedro Sanchez.

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The approach I used for this taxonomy is methodical and analytical so I wrote a format of caption which is repeated through all the posts and allow us to precisely place the handshake in space and time.

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