Dear readers. I asked D what a circle is because she was talking about something—she was talking about works—that is always returning, repeating itself—a variation, she said. I asked her whether it is a circle because it always returns to the same place and asks the same questions, or if it is a circle because it is circumscribing something, giving an outline, creating a territory, but never going into whatever is inside. Since I discovered “hermeneutical circles” writing my BA thesis, I’ve been fascinated by them, but I understand D wanting to escape the trap a circle can become. The reason Betraying Gestures #15 was meagre was that I didn’t want to be inside an apartment writing; I didn’t want to not do something else to be writing Betraying Gestures the way I think it should. D said I could implode what I think I should do and the way I think I should write. I told her I didn’t want to, that everything already felt confusing and uncertain, and that one of the only things that seemed reliable was writing Betraying Gestures. I then decided to write a lazy edition. D said I must now get her when she asks me, “To write is to live, Vinícius?”. I understood that every time she thinks about writing, she thinks as I did, when I didn’t want not to do other things, maybe more real things, to stay home alone and write. I see my stats on Substack, and I begin to think the weariness is not only mine but also that of my readers, whom I now address in the beginning as “dear”. I didn’t use an exclamation point, as does Elif. Just the sober same old period. Who knows? Next week might call for something more fussy! I remember being told as a kid that if one can draw a perfect circle without any tool other than a pencil or a piece of chalk, they are mad. Thinking or writing in a circular mode calms me down; reaching the beginning gives me a sensation of perfection—that something is what it should be. It works! From the conversation with D, the last edition of Betraying Gestures, and a general state of mind, I started thinking that the circle Betraying Gestures is written upon is becoming smaller and smaller. I expect a circle to grow towards its center but also to get wider and wider. Betraying Gestures’ newsletter began because I wanted to utter Betraying Gestures in a process of simultaneously writing what I want it to be and what it is. It has worked, but I'm now doubting this process, which starts to seem circular in the sense D complained about. Especially now that I have other things to work on, Betraying Gestures’ things. I’m still preparing for Feira Tijuana, which is this weekend. Friday is the launch of Colaglue by Dubious Gestures published by Betraying Gestures in collaboration with Coisas que Matam (read more about it in Betraying Gestures #12 and check out Coisas que Matam’s Instagram to follow the launch). I never wanted to write such a doubtful edition. But last week’s was to take a breath, and I’m still inhaling and exhaling in some form of suspension. Taking a breath reminded me of an exhibition I participated in a couple of years ago, On Holding, organised by João Villas. The exhibition was at the Lambeth County Court, in London, a deactivated court; my work took place at the telephone kiosk, from where a recording of me breathing was played (I decided to upload it to Soundcloud so it may serve as a soundtrack for this letter). I didn’t go to the exhibition, which included João Villas and other brilliant artists, but from what I was told, the breathing echoed through the whole building. I like imagining it. There was another part of the work, one that I would subtract from it if I were to redo it. There were audio transmissions in which I read lists written on meanings and practices between counting and telling, discussed in Betraying Gestures #14. It was also with João that I worked on a publication for a few months that was never finished but still will be, now with Betraying Gestures: Jam. Its thread was “a list including jammed things as well as things that jam”. The list had items such as "file rendering/and a word on the tip of my tongue/and the Evergreen at the Suez Canal/and the external pressure of the global economy against the internal forces of social change/and the tail of a rotting whale/or the tale of the walrus who cancelled New Year.” On Friday, I travelled with a friend. We got stuck in traffic—the opposite of flow and a synonym for jam—and a trip that was supposed to have taken one hour took us three. There, we met a dear friend for dinner—delayed due to the traffic. She asked me about a project she helped me with a few years ago. Editora Polinésia, another project of a publisher; a project to write a publisher. Driving back, the traffic flowing, I realised Betraying Gestures has a lot of Editora Polinésia, Hold (breath), and, at least in the newsletter, at the moment, Jam. See, the good part of circles, the part that makes me fascinated: things meeting again. It is beautiful when the circles are done by the things themselves rather than by my own will. Betraying Gestures is: “Every Monday before midnight (UTC-3), a new letter comes out. Each letter has between 702
and 1705 words. Since Betraying Gestures #4, every letter comes with a photo from my camera roll.” It changed time zones and will change again in two weeks; it used to have a different interval of words and not have the bit about a photo from my camera roll. This is the score, and I can change it to change the writing, or the writing can change and alter the score—as has been done with the number of words. Researching recordings and phone calls and publishing and writing, I read about a project by David H. Katzive at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 1969 that proposed artists gave instructions for their works through a phone call. The phone conversations with the curator were recorded and published on a vinyl called Art By Telephone, with each track being an edited conversation between the curator and one of the artists. When I did Hold (breath), I felt that only the sound of my breathing would be too little for a work, but I didn’t think narratively about silence on a phone call. The suspense of it. Like the gesture of someone looking away. Thank you for reading.