Google Weaving Stop-time (X)
Supported by
For this contribution I was awarded with the “Kvadratscholarship”
of 15,000 SEK and 20 kg of wool yarn from
Kvadrat
Description of project
As part of the Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design
2019 award?/exhibition invitation? I presented ”Google
Weaving Stop-time (X)” as a small part of my larger project
”Google Weaving Stop-time” from 2018.
Ung Svensk Form is an arena for young design in Sweden. Ung
Svensk Form is a juried competition where the nominated
entries take part in a travelling exhibition.
My contribution consists of two tapestries in wool on linen
warp, both my design. One of the tapestries is woven by my
assistant Mortaza (no last name disclosed due to asylum
status) during the project for 4th Istanbul Design Biennial
(2018) and one is woven by myself copying his weave. The
works are a continuation of my collaborative project “Google
Weaving Stop-time” (2018) - an online weaving community,
with 27 participating weavers, a space for sharing knowledge
in rya weaving, and an exhibition of a collective work created
for 4th Istanbul Design Biennial 2018 (curated by Jan Boelen)
that brought hand weavers from all over the world together
via a social media call I made. We were all making tapestries
based on the Google search words “Textile Labour Turkey”.
I made this additional work for several reasons:
In “Google Weaving Stop-time” (for 4th Istanbul Design
Biennial) my contribution was much smaller than the works I
usually do, but lack of time prevented me to invest more time
and effort and I decided to look for an assistant.
The experience of working with an assistant was new to me (I
also hired him, besides above mentioned lack of time, due to
physical limitations of a late stage in pregnancy and couldn´t
weave myself) – the experience left me with a feeling of
dissatisfaction since I did not make the contribution with my
own hands.
In the collective weaving project “Google Weaving Stop-Time”
the time investment was different than my usual. There was
the time of the other weavers who decided how long things
would take. My own time in the project was spent mostly in
front of the computer to follow their processes and answer
questions and comments over e-mails and on Facebook. This
was unsatisfying and added to a wish to weave a larger
contribution myself. As part of the experience of feeling
unsatisfied I wanted to make a shift in my experience from the
“online friendships” in the “Google Weaving Stop-time”
project to another form of collaboration that was also a very
different way of working. Mortaza was someone I met in
person in Gothenburg and invited to my temporary studio and
could make real offline conversations with.
I found a risk in trying to make a human connection through
our weaving – even though the images woven are floating
around online, depicting mostly textiles workers that appeared
in the Google search “Textile Labour Turkey” – when I during
our conversations in the studio found out that Mortaza himself
have migrated through Turkey. I found this setting rather
painful, that he was now weaving for me, an image of a boy
not very unlike himself. This created a strong wish for me to
add my own labour into the project and therefore made a
tapestry copying his.
The jury described my contribution as: “Two different
communication methods, Google and handcraft, in deeply
impressive union. Our era’s speed meets historical slowness
and creates a worldwide collective tapestry in several ways”.
In reflection the two contributions, one woven by me and the
other woven by Mortaza, I believe works well highlighting
some of my research interests of time and time investments in
the subject of weaving.
Type of work
Artistic work in juried curated exhibition (competition) Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design
Published in
ArkDes, Stockholm
STHL Furniture Fair (public talk)
Malmö Form/Design
Slagthuset (The Conference)
Nordstan (Gothenburg Design Festival)
BoMo (Borlänge Modern)
Published in the catalogue “Ung Svensk Form 2019”
Form Magazine date & pages?
Link to web site
http://ungsvenskform.se/
View/ Open
Date
2019-02-05Creator
Röndahl, Emelie
Keywords
Handweaving
rya
crafts
design research
exhibition
Publication type
artistic work
Language
eng