Textiles in text: text in textiles
Manopoulou, Loucia (2022) Textiles in text: text in textiles. In: Fashion, Photography, Storytelling, And Textiles’, Progressive Connextions, Global Inclusive Interdisciplinary Conference, 9-10 July 2022, Athens, Greece. (Unpublished)
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This audio-visual presentation intends to deepen the understanding of the ontology of crafts curation. Specifically, this paper discusses Beyond Trauma (2021) which brought together textile artist Tara Kennedy and creative writer Dr Lynn Hamilton to communicate the impact of trauma through textiles and text. The intention was for the viewers to consider how the material and immaterial properties of textile and text could produce or affect and change perceptions of each discipline. The decision to select a textile artist was based on the etymology of the word “text”. “Text” relates to “texture” and “textile” and traces back to “texo” – “to weave”, referring to the way words and sentences are “woven” together. The curator identified conceptual links between Kennedy’s practice and Hamilton’s stories. Moreover, Kennedy was selected based on her emphasis and priority to making process, the performance of making rather than the outcome.
Attempts to understand media beyond the materiality of them in a literal sense have accelerated inquiries into the relations between different media where often another medium takes its form. The exhibition drew on the notion of materiality as seen in Jeehee Hong essay “material/materiality” (2003), where materiality plays a crucial role in locating the media as a paradigm, which is articulated by its relationship to form and content of a medium. And on materiality of medium as seen in Jean Baudrillard’s characterization of a medium as a system administered by the code that is interwoven with a technical apparatus (sound and image) as well as the corporeal one (gestures, language) (Baudrillard, in Wardrip Fruin, 2003: 284). Baudrillard states that “reciprocity comes into being through the destruction of mediums per se.” (ibid). Composed of the “immaterial” code, yet still to be “destroyed,” a medium here is fully charged with its materiality.
This paper demonstrates how contemporary craft curation makes room for pluralistic practices that combine and cross formerly distinct borders, disciplines, materials, techniques, and histories.
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