Just to headline the feedback and leads I got at the Goldsmiths kick-off meet at the CHRRCT: I will be looking at different uses of the metaphor of the textile, beyond those I already explored in my pilot piece. Also, I will explore different reasons for using textile to communicate, political info, religious experience etc. Margaret showed me an Afghan Warrug from their textile archive in the flesh, I have only seen these online; a Beluchi tribe rug made woven during the Soviet invasion, crammed full of symbols communicating what was happening to the country. This also happened in Chile during Pinochet. These artefacts were able to be shipped out of the country unnoticed mainly because they were made by women and were woven (a predominantly female practice, also ‘unthreatening.’.). They are beautiful but also sinister, loaded with meaning and the urge to communicate an often disturbing state of play.
We spoke about my previous trials in and urge to continue to wrap and bind objects, and I will be looking into this practice in various cultural contexts. There is a thread that connects The Loom project, my interest n Gifting and this desire to wrap my deceased mothers cutlery and rice cookers in kilim wool, and it leads somewhere…
Margaret and Julie mentioned a few examples related to this , one in the UK in the Celtic tradition, the tying of objects to trees (for mourning? healing?), even handbags, which then, due to the lime in the water, get fossilised and transformed into something else.
Julie mentioned a visitor to the Loom textile show , a woman who had participated online in the project and come in asking where her husband was in the textile and was quite distressed to not be able to pinpoint exactly where his information was woven in. Although it is technically possible to do this, this was not the emphasis of the piece. This raises the question of how much the piece allows for the total loss of identity into the work, a metaphor for the loss of the same at the point of death.
I still feel that unity and the power of the collective within the final work is the priority, but I do recognise that the experience of touch (the woman had not participated in the installation where she would have been able to write a ribbon to her husband and read and touch others contributions) should play more of a part in the work, for a longer timeframe. To physically connect with the emotional energy absorbed into a cloth or woven object as it grows seems to me to provide the possibility of this.
Unfortunately Janis Jefferies (my mentor on this stage of the project) was unable to be at the meeting, but I am hoping writing up my process in this way will allow a dialogue with her and others which can take place intermittently until we next meet.
