Tears of Joy

How can emojis become vehicles for movement, experience, and emotion? Tears of Joy is the emoji most frequently used on social media. Emojis are used every day and across generations to communicate emotions and subtleties in our texts on social platforms and messaging apps. Perhaps they could even be described as the hieroglyphs of today. Yet, they are not that old. It was only in the 1990s that the first emoji keyboard was created. Since then, the library of emojis has been continuously growing and evolving.

This project examines emojis through the prism of the body. How can they be embodied? Do their restrictive forms commodify the multifaceted range of human expression? Or, from another perspective, can their vocabulary become a vehicle for movement, experience, and emotion? This research invites emojis out of the virtual realm and into the performative space, where the body engages in conversation with these digital entities. Inhabiting, stretching, altering, twisting, and shifting one another, both body and emoji transcend the representational characteristics of their surface pixels, unfolding multiple layers, spaces, and dimensions of meaning-making and connection.

Tears of Joy is a sensorial study of virtual communication with critical awareness, opening a dialogue about the future of human expression in an increasingly digital world. During the residency at workspacebrussels in October 2024, Hannah will embark on the first phase of movement research and choreographic creation for the piece, which is intended to be developed later into a full work with multiple performers.