HAND SIGNALS

Contributed By: Douglas Paulson, Kerry Downey

Hand Signals for Participatory Discussion and Decision Making is a poster of hand signals used to help facilitate a conversation for a group of people. They help to ensure that all voices are heard in a conversation or decison-making process. It's a sign language to allow people to constantly respond, keep to a process, and guage the feeling of the room. They are ways to join the conversation without interrupting the speaking or being interrupted. Like any language, there are a lot of variations on signals, here are some common ones! These have been developed over years, ahve been used by many types of groups of the years. This can help speed up your decision making process. It's great for multi-lingual groups. Voice your opinion without being forced into a YES or NO binary.

About Douglas Paulson:

Douglas Paulson is an artist and educator who maintains collaborative practices with many of his favorite people.  He loves drawing, making books, and creating sprawling cultural and educational projects that bring together people with disparate backgrounds.  In 2012, he partnered kids withs artists and urban planners to design and build Kitty City, a city for kittens (Flux Factory, 2012). He and Heidi Neilson recently inflated the Menu For Mars Kitchen (The Boiler, 2015) to prototype food for the Red Planet.  In 2016, Doug collaborated with refugees from the Middle East and Africa who have relocated to Germany and Norway; producing parallel projects designed to bring people face to face with their new neighbors. http://www.douglaspaulson.com/

About Kerry Downey:

Kerry Downey (b.1979,  Ft. Lauderdale) is a multi-disciplinary artist who makes videos, works on paper, and performances. Downey’s work illuminates the connections between private emotion and political consciousness. Their work presents queer bodies, landscapes, and objects as intimate, sensorial experiences..  Their work is heavily influenced by gender queerness, their commitment to feminist collaborations, and their work as a caregiver and teacher of people with Alzheimer’s and other disabilities.

Downey has recently had a solo show at CAVE in Detroit and a two-person show at Knockdown Center. They have also exhibited at the Queens Museum, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, the Drawing Center, and the Paris International with Taylor Macklin.  In 2015, Downey was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant.  Artist-in-residencies include Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, SHIFT at the EFA Project Space, the Drawing Center’s Open Sessions, Real Time and Space in Oakland, CA, the Vermont Studio Center. Downey participated in the Queer/Art/Mentorship program in 2013. They are currently in residence at Triangle Arts Association in Brooklyn. Downey holds a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Hunter College. http://www.kerrydowney.com/