Excerpts from the book Forecast Platform 6th Edition, Berlin, 2022.

Gestures of Domestic Memories: a performative way-of-knowing

by Aída Herrera Peña,
2021, DE
^{Project developed within the framework of Forecast Sixth Edition – Skills e.V. mentored by french choreographer Mathilde Monnier.}

This project explores the often-invisible world of migrant domestic labor in Berlin through the medium of the human body. It centers on the physical gestures and embodied knowledge of a worker navigating life in a new country.

The body is presented as an active material—a living archive of repetitive tasks performed to care for others' private spaces. For many migrant workers, particularly those moving from the Global South to the North, these daily gestures become a crucial source of income and a way to navigate the struggles of life in transition.v

Gestures of Domestic Memories operates between the private and the public, using performance, film, and installation to make this hidden labor visible. By focusing on intuition and the tacit knowledge held within the body, the project invites a critical reflection on the socio-cultural and political dimensions of domestic work in our society. It asks us to consider the hands that care for our homes and the stories their movements tell.

SHORT FILM

ABOUT
In a capitalist society where digital marketplaces exchange human bodies in the form of services, a migrant domestic worker shows us the daily life of household chores. From her self-consciousness, she takes us on a journey of gestures and sensations expressed in time, space, and movement. This short film-performance based on real events brings us a unique perspective on domestic work and migration in Berlin.

CREDITSDirector and producer <Aída Herrera Peña>Camera and Edition <Esteban Annon>Music composition <Andrés Ibagon>
Cast <Ruslana Massarova> <Aída Herrera Peña>

Aída Herrera Peña, Berlin-based design researcher with a background in audiovisual media production, dance, and industrial design with a focus on social studies - including performance studies -. Andrés Ibagon, Buenos Aires/Bogotá-based historian and artist with emphasis on Latin American and Argentinean theater and film studies. Art direction, script and sound design for media. Esteban Amon, Hamburg-based filmmaker and designer with a background in multimedia, fashion and editorial content.

WATCH THE FILM

PUBLICATIONS & COLLABORATIONS

Visualizing the Virus: Online pubilcation about the development of the project Gestures of Domestic Memories: A Performative Way-of-Knowing (Herrera, 2022).

Mondon-Navazo, M., & Murgia, A. (2025). ‘It’s labour exploitation, but fortunately there is a lot of solidarity’. A qualitative case study with cleaning platform workers in Berlin. Globalizations, 1–19. Access to non-edited version

Murgia, A. (Ed.). (2025). Hybrid Labour: Measuring, Classifying, and Representing Workers at the Boundaries of Employment and Self-employment (1st ed.). Routledge.

FESTIVALS & TALKS

Roundtable I have a problem with cleanliness at the Bauhaus Study Rooms 2022 with Adam Drazin (Moderator), Charlie-Anne Côté and Nancy Dayanne Valladares. Hybrid format, June 17th, 2022 at Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, DE.

“In the roundtable "I have a problem with cleanliness," Adam Drazin will discuss forms of cleaning in relation to design practices with Aída Herrera Peña, Charlie-Anne Côté, Nancy Dayanne Valladares and the audience. This panel starts with the premise that modes of cleaning are inherent in particular design practices. Therefore, the contributors will examine the production of cleanliness as a field of negotiations between materialities, modes and rules.” more

Bauhaus Study Rooms „Engaging with Dirt. Thinking Design beyond Cleanliness“, Bauhausgebäude, 17.6.2022 © Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau / Foto: Tenschert, Yvonne, 2022

SCREENINGS

Participation at Openscreening in collaboration with Freilulftkino Insel, August 16th, 2023 at Ateliers Gardens, Berlin, DE.