Slowing down and attending opened up the possibility for unexpected encounters. Things that might have ordinarily been overlooked, such as plants emerging against the odds, cracked earth, shafts of light, traces through fields and reflections in windows, became significant moments. Through the embodied practice of wayfaring and analogue photography, these moments became acts of disrupting the tourist gaze and habitual ways of seeing. These encounters are small and could be seen as insignificant, but they are in fact what Manning describes as ‘minor gestures’ (Manning, 2016). The minor gesture ‘creates sites of dissonance, staging disturbances that open experience to new modes of expression’ (Manning, 2016, pg. 2). They are not a dramatic event, but a subtle shift, a hesitation or pause, a detour on your route. It is a small change that creates new direction within the field of becoming; creativity often emerges from minor gestures. The minor gesture moves things in ‘new and divergent directions’ (Manning, 2016, pg. 3); it is the ‘forward-force capable of carrying the affective tonality of nonconscious resonance and moving it toward the articulation, edging into consciousness, of new modes of existence’ (Manning, 2016, pg. 7). Minor gestures are acts of disruption, ‘forms of resistance’ (Manning, 2016, pg.15); they redirect perception and generate new meaning. In order to allow for minor gestures, you need to adopt processes that create the correct conditions; embodied practice, intuition, attentive looking, slowing down, being open, wayfaring.
Manning, E. (2016) The Minor Gesture. Georgia: Duke University Press.