Elon’s Arm: On the Reanimation of a “Rigid” Gesture

Abstract In late January 2025, German police launched an inquiry into an online video of an art-action at the Tesla Gigafactory just outside of Berlin. After first questioning the veracity of the footage, the investigators condemned the art-action as a violation of Germany’s strict ban on Nazi-associated iconography, on the grounds that the projection included a clip of Elon Musk’s Inauguration Day salute and appended the word “HEIL” to the factory’s “TESLA” lettering. This situation—both the reanimation of a gesture and its uptake—raises critical questions about the political and performative force of quotable gestures. This article explores two such reanimations of Elon’s arm. Drawing on documentation, interviews, and media uptake of art-actions by groups in Europe and the UK, I show how these actors have sought to redefine the context of Musk’s gesture and (re)situate it within a larger constellation of emblematic neo-Nazi body movements. My analysis builds on linguistic-anthropological theorizations of gesture, animation, and citationality to argue that these art-actions constitute reanimations of a “rigid” gesture that route critique through an apparently sovereign figure toward its infrastructural grounds.