Textiles, Identity and Innovation: Design the Future

Proceedings of the 1st International Textile Design Conference (D_TEX 2017), November 2-4, 2017, Lisbon, Portugal

Gianni Montagna, Cristina Carvalho, Gianni Montagna, Cristina Carvalho

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351585422
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

D_TEX presents itself as a starting point at a crossroads of ideas and debates around the complex universe of Textile Design in all its forms, manifestations and dimensions. The textile universe, allied to mankind since its beginnings, is increasingly far from being an area of exhausted possibilities, each moment proposing important innovations that need a presentation, discussion and maturation space that is comprehensive and above all inter- and transdisciplinary.

Presently, the disciplinary areas where the textile area is present are increasing and important, such as fashion, home textiles, technical clothing and accessories, but also construction and health, among others, and can provide new possibilities and different disciplinary areas and allowing the production of new knowledge.

D_TEX proposes to join the thinking of design, with technologies, tradition, techniques, and related areas, in a single space where ideas are combined with the technique and with the projectual and research capacity, thus providing for the creation of concepts, opinions, associations of ideas, links and connections that allow the conception of ideas, products and services.

The interdisciplinary nature of design is a reality that fully reaches the textile material in its essence and its practical application, through the synergy and contamination by the different interventions that make up the multidisciplinary teams of research. The generic theme of D_TEX Textile Design Conference 2017, held at Lisbon School of Architecture of the University of Lisbon, Portugal on November 2-4, 2017, is Design the Future, starting from the crossroads of ideas and debates, a new starting point for the exploration of textile materials, their identities and innovations in all their dimensions.

1. Textile

1.1. Weaving and knitting

The use of textiles in Anne Wilson and Kathrin Stumreich’s work

Inês Pereira Guerreiro Jorge

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I will analyze some works by artists Anne Wilson (b. 1949) and Kathrin Stumreich (b. 1976), which incorporate textiles and explore the boundaries between hand and body, manual and digital tools. By combining different weaving techniques and digital tools in the creation of installations, videos, performances and community projects, their pieces oscillate between the materiality of the artifact and the immateriality of the digital image and/or sound, the reflection on handwork and the inclusion of the spectator’s body. In these works, the dialogue between craft and technology opposes to the common perception that these two fields are irreconcilable; instead, it insinuates that both establish connections, either in the literal or in the symbolic sense. At a symbolic level, such entanglements may refer to the human biological system or to social relations that are being optimized and transformed by the Internet and social networks.

In this paper, I will analyze works by artists Anne Wilson and Kathrin Stumreich, which incorporate textiles and explore the boundaries between hand and body, manual and digital tools. By combining different weaving techniques and digital tools in the creation of installations, videos, performances and community projects, the pieces conceived by these two artists oscillate between the materiality of the artifact and the immateriality of the digital image and/or sound, the reflection on the history and processes of handwork, and the inclusion of the spectator’s body.

1 THE DICHOTOMY MANUAL/DIGITAL IN SOME INSTALLATIONS BY ANNE WILSON AND KATHRIN STUMREICH

Anne Wilson (b. 1949) has been exploring the dichotomy between manual and digital processes in installations made with organic or poor materials – such as textiles, human hair, pins, wire and glass –, which are subjected to audiovisual recording. Her works often include functional items that thereby lose their utility, while the memory of their lost function is evoked. Moreover, the displacement of these objects – that were once useful – into the art gallery recalls the readymade principle introduced by Marcel Duchamp in 1913. The traditional notion of skill is then subverted through the blend of weaving techniques, digital tools, and randomness, whilst conceptual divides of making/unmaking and creating/destroying are put into question.

Wilson started exploring these notions in 2000, through the creation of abstract landscapes on horizontal platforms that were formed by torn, punctured and stitched tablecloth, such as the installation Feast. Later, she filled these surfaces with small constructions of found black lace, which were subsequently scanned, filtered, printed on paper, and once again stitched on the original landscapes, as in the piece Topologies (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Topologies, Anne Wilson, 2002–2008. Lace, thread, cloth and pins on painted wood support, 79 cm high × 188 cm wide × 1.10 m long (overall dimension).

Such surfaces resemble tables, whose functional nature leads us to analyze them according to Howard Risatti’s book A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression. In this book, Risatti (2007) established a taxonomy of objects based on their ability to fulfill the body’s physiological needs, i.e. their “applied function” (Risatti, 2007). Such classification divides objects in the following three categories, along with a fourth one related to architecture:

a) Containers – such as jugs, bowls and vases;

b) Covers – such as clothes, blankets and quilts;

c) Supports – such as beds, tables and chairs;

d) Shelters

According to this taxonomy, the bases on which Anne Wilson’s scenarios are built fall into the category of “supports”. As a verb, “to support” means to serve as a physical or psychological foundation for something or someone.

Figuratively speaking, these supports can stand for dining tables that witness encounters and bear several social codes. In this sense, they incite us to reflect on the traditional notion of family as a symbol of support and protection, as well as on the prevalence of this notion today.

The use of dining tables to represent codes of conduct and social roles is also present in the iconic installation The Dinner Party, developed by Judy Chicago between 1974 and 1979. In this piece, which incorporates crafts such as embroidery, weaving, sewing and china painting, the set of a supper is recreated on a triangular table, where thirty-nine illustrious women who have been overlooked by History are recalled. The table’s triangular shape is an allusion not only to femininity, but also to the Last Supper, as thirteen women are placed on each side, as opposed to the thirteen men that were present according to the Gospel accounts.

On the other hand, Wilson’s work Feast seems to allude to the analogy between food and sex. This correlation dates back to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical studies, which turned sexuality into a key element of the self (Freud 2013 [1901]). Almost one hundred years later, art historian Preziosi (1999) stated the following: “You are not only “what you eat” or what you make, consume, or collect, but you are also, and especially, what you desire.” (Preziosi 1999)

The tables comprising both installations can also be interpreted as sewing tables which, in the same way as the work Dinner Party, pay tribute to the intricacy and delicacy of manual, domestic and feminine labor. When associated with Risatti’s taxonomy, this idea leads us to suggest that these tables represent women as the essential foundation of families, thus challenging traditional Western representations of women as fragile and passive beings. In any case, the insinuation of the hand and the body in these pieces is unquestionable.

The title of the second installation, Topologies, carries an additional layer of meaning. Topology is the branch of geometry dealing with “the properties of a figure that are unaffected by continuous distortion, such as stretching or knotting”. Therefore, it involves “the study of limits in sets considered as collections of points (…) making a given set a topological space” (Topology 2017). Likewise, in this installation the structural properties of lace are explored through the deconstruction of found black lace and through the creation of large horizontal topographies. As stated in the artist’s website, Topologies “is a constantly unfolding process of close observation, dissection, and recreation” (Topologies n.d.).

The computer plays a pivotal role in the observation phase, as lace fragments are scanned, filtered, and printed out as paper images. The digital prints once again acquire a physical form through hand stitching, and then are placed in the topography, together with the found and rebuilt lace.

The project Topologies contains multiple references, namely regarding connections between material and immaterial systems of relationships – for instance, textile networks and the World Wide Web –, the biological system, microscopic views of cellular structures, and macroscopic views of urban constructions. None of these themes or perspectives is privileged over the other, as in today’s information society, in which the information explosion driven by digital information and communication technologies blurs the hierarchies between different contents.

Similarly, artist Kathrin Stumreich (b. 1976) has been exploring the links between weaving and electronics. By manipulating digital tools with aesthetic ends, she celebrates the transforming power of technology within the industry and the arts.

The alliance between craft and digital technology was also examined in the exhibition The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft, held at the Fuller Craft Museum of Massachusetts in 2010. According to the curator Fo Wilson, the show embodied “a wide variety of craft media in objects that all incorporate digital technology, or ‘new media’, in some manner” (Harrington 2010). Kathrin Stumreich’s work exemplifies this type of creations, while reflecting on both craft and technology’s ability to create connections, either in a literal or in a figurative sense, as in Anne Wilson’s network landscapes.

Furthermore, some of Stumreich’s pieces deal with the theme of mobility. In the installation Der Faden (Fig. 2), “a string is tied to a starting point and unwinds with the travelling streetcar, wrapping up the city” (Der Faden 2010). The trail of the string is recorded by a piezo (a type of microphone that senses audio vibrations through contact with solid objects) that amplifies the resulting sound and creates a full-scale map of the itinerary. The unravelling sound catches the attention of passers-by, allowing them to produce their own acoustic fantasies (Gustafsson & Falb 2010).

Figure 2. Der Faden, Kathrin Stumreich, 2010. Detail of bobbin mounted on a tram.

Such performative character requires the public’s action, as the incorporated device incites people to participate in a personalized “tour”, which is also rooted in reality. Through the use of technology and motion, Der Faden incites us to reflect on the increasing mental and physical passiveness prompted by Western devices of representation – from linear perspective to cinema –, the new possibilities provided by interactive technology, and the blurring of territorial borders caused by the dissemination of Internet.

This installation entails a temporary piece that overcomes the mere object (the bobbin) and its traditional function (to wind the thread for weaving).Accordingly, craft becomes implicated in cutting-edge technology, and therefore in contemporaneity.

2 CRAFT, PERFORMANCE AND COMMUNITY IN SOME WORKS BY...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Editor biographies
• Committee members
• 1. Textile
• 2. Identity
• 3. Innovation
• Author index