| art.description.project | Background
Creating textiles for utilitarian purposes has for millennia been
the main motivation for hand weaving. Why should we uphold
the practice today when textiles can be woven both faster and
more cheaply industrially?
In conversations I have led since 2013 with craftspeople in
Denmark, Japan, Sweden, Finland and Mexico, the productive
achievement in craft, the usable product, features as only one
in a range of diverse motivations for weavers/makers. Craft
connects work (material, time and product), people (suppliers,
family, co-workers and neighbours) and space (the living and
built environment), and is enabled by the movements of the
craftsperson’s body, intellect and soul. The recurring
appearance of themes like individual and communal identity,
tacit and embodied knowledge, nuanced and instinctive bodily
sensitivity, and social cohesion and development in these
exchanges are not a surprise, yet pose a difficult question: in
what way can these potentials be used in our digital-industrial
times. The first edition of the Export/import workshop (held at 21st
Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan in 2017)
attempted to translate into a direct physical experience the
values that craft is given by its practitioners around the globe:
the potential meaning of craft for us as humans in different
parts of our globalized society. In 2019 I had the opportunity
to develop a further edition of the Export/Import installation
as part of the exhibition Japan Retur at A. Petersen Gallery in
Copenhagen.
Go visiting, having visits
I decided to use this occasion to work more deliberately with
the act of “having visits” as a specific method of inquiry. I have
come to think of “having visits” as a method of inquiry in
participatory craft and design research after reading professor
Donna Haraway´s book Staying with the Trouble (Haraway
2016). In the chapter “A Curious Practice” (126-133), Haraway
presents German philosopher Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on
“go visiting” and builds on them using the fieldwork of Belgian
philosopher Vinciane Despret. In Haraway´s interpretation,
“visiting” for a researcher means going out into the world
being curious and engaging with what one meets, not looking
for specific answers or solutions but allowing for what will
happen in encounters to influence the research path. Haraway
here works with the posture of being “response-able” (130).
The visit is a dynamic between the researcher and who and
what is encountered. Mistakes and misunderstandings are
likely to happen when engaging with others, but, says
Haraway, this is exactly where the yet-unknown is likely to be
found: “Visiting is a subject- and object-making dance, and the
choreographer is a trickster.” (127)
As a designer creating weaving spaces for engagement and
participation, my process consists not only in visiting different
contexts. It is an essential part of my practice to receive
visitors – to have visits – in the spaces that I set up. In the
participatory projects I have created in the past seven years,
my experience has been that having visits and, thus, being the
host can be an equally stimulating and thought-provoking
process as venturing to go visiting.
Having visits at gallery A. Petersen
Two workshops at A. Petersen departed from how I had
worked previously. For the first time I had invited a group of
experienced Danish weavers and a group of Nordic weaving
educators to spend time weaving and conversing in a weaving
space I had set up, in order to have a more informed
conversation about what weaving meant for them and for
their students. The conversations were recorded, and one of
the sessions documented through photography. What was
particularly interesting for me in this first attempt to work
more deliberately with “having visits” as a method of inquiry
was to observe how the physical movement affected the
conversation? Time with the loom allowed each of the
weavers to step in and out of the conversation as they pleased
and it allowed for elaborations between two or three people
instead of the whole group. The interaction with the materials
and looms evoked new and different considerations about the
different topics than sitting around a table. I also believe that
the physical movement and interaction with material,
compared with concentrated conversation of an interview,
made it possible to spend five active hours together without
being exhausted. While there is still much to explore and
refine in the use of “having visits” as a method of inquiry, this
first attempt confirmed that there is potential. In the coming
phase of the PhD project I will work with how to consider and
develop the set-up up my spaces in ways that physically
evokes considerations in relation to my inquiry, when having
visits. | sv |
