Jefta van Dinther

How do bodies speak, and what is visual language? “Mercury Rising” explores the volatile terrain between sign language, gesture and meaning, where movement becomes language and vice versa. A phenomenological journey through communication that transcends the literal, inviting all audiences into a paradigm-shifting experience.

“Mercury Rising” emerges from a phenomenological excavation of language. Created in collaboration with and performed by Dawn Jani Birley, Rita Mazza, and Lukas Malkowski, the performance charts both ancient and future non-linear languages, navigating the terrain between communication, gesture, agency, and physicality. “Mercury Rising” positions the body as a volatile site of discourse – a place where meaning is made, unmade, and transformed through movement. While inviting its audience to decipher an abundance of signs, the work also explores the slippery nature of interpretation and ultimately releases us from the need for the literal or the explanatory. Incorporating multiple sign languages, and created for all audiences – including Deaf and hearing audiences – Mercury Rising addresses the complexity of human communication on the brink of a paradigm shift. What we share, in the end, is not certainty, but the impossibility of full understanding, and the urge to connect nonetheless.