Threads snipped off, but continuing elsewhere

The Textile Files have now for some time been laying dormant, no longer fed by new additions, though still a useful archive to browse. Yet the investigations into the fabric of life continue in various shapes and guises elsewhere. To pick up new threads and follow loose ends into lived realities and those of the imagination, go to the Tales from the fabric of life

Buttons

"‘Careful and curved, cake and sober, all accounts and mixture, a guess at anything is righteous, should there be a call there would be a voice.’
— Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons

The humble button encompasses ideas of connectivity, intimacy, relation, precision, production (on/off), kindness and smallness. Its origin in the Latin buttare, to thrust, and in the old French boton, bud, roots the button in a potentiality that stretches and plies its usage from metaphor to technology. The domesticity of the button, its closeness to our skin in clothing or its proximity in the home, the laptop, the TV remote control, the microwave, calls us to examine our relations to objects and the ergonomics of their interactions with us. As a mediator between man and machine, how does the button inhabit this interstice and what are the implications of their prevalence within the sphere of modern living? How do buttons function within digital culture? Buttons, too, can encapsulate very real threats; the detonation of nuclear warheads or the transmission of confidential information is only a button’s press away; they can contain and express our most strident political or aesthetic positions, but what happens when these buttons are in the possession of an enemy? They have become integral to the way we communicate: phone, email and the internet all require the push of a button to generate action. Playful and tender, the button functions as ornamentation and fastening, both aesthetic and practical.
We here at Static put forth the potentiality of buttons: a haberdashery of usages."


Source and more info http://www.londonconsortium.com/

The detective & the jumper - an update

Previously on this blog: The knitted detective

The Killing II has now arrived on our screens, and the jumper is yet again taking centre stage, as Ginny Dougray reveals on the Radio Times blog:

'I've only seen the first two episodes - and am gripped, once again - but cannot help remarking on The Sweater, which is not the beloved Faroese, black-on-white knit of old but a cheery, cherry-red. "There's this rule, you know, in the bones of every person doing what I do, that you should never give the audience what they want," says Grabol. "It's like an artistic law - you shouldn't repeat yourself, because then you're dead creatively. So there's a sense of 'They want the jumper? Well, they're not going to get the jumper!' "


Find about more about Lund's jumpers

Products with love

Today I am launching an internet shop, Solveighs Textilkabinett at DaWanda,the website for 'products with love'.

You find my Textilkabinett @
http://en.dawanda.com/shop/mirabilia-domestica

If you have seen any other work of mine that you like on my blogs or website, I am happy to list it and sell it via the Textilkabinett.

Enjoy your visit, and if you like it tell others about it.

Psyche

Butterfly and moth are of the same family. Airy and light, colourful or camouflaged, fragile or furry, fluttering in the sunshine in search of nectar, seeking the light in the darkness of the night, they are symbols of the spirit, of metamorphosis and the cycle of life. In myth, Psyche wears butterfly wings and moths are said to be the souls of the dead.

More moths & butterflies

Pink fluff, fur & feathers

While in Eastbourne the deafening noise of planes fills the summer air and the Royal Air Force hands out stickers to promote their trade to a new generation of heroes in the making, only a few miles down the coast their colleagues march amidst rainbow colours, pink furs and feathers to the sound of music in a different kind of celebration.

Images of Brighton Pride 2011

Der unendliche Faden - The never-ending thread

Der unendliche Faden - The never-ending thread - is the title of an installation by Thomas Hauck & Sabina Kaeser at Kunsthaus Kannen/Germany.Visitors are invited to add to the web of threads that stretches through the grounds around the Kunsthaus. While each thread in itself is finite, joined together they create a continuously growing web of infinite potential, only ending when people cease to work on it.

"31. Mai 2011 – 05. Juni 2011

Zum Auftakt der Ausstellung „Art Brut und Textil“ entsteht vor dem Park im Kunsthaus ein riesiges Netzwerk. Jeder der Teilnehmer kann seine Wolle selbst mitbringen und Freunde zum gemeinsamen Vernetzen einladen. Ins Leben gerufen wird die Aktion vom dem Installations- und Performanceduo „DAS ARCHIV“, das aus Thomas J. Hauck aus Berlin und Sabina Kaeser aus Zürich, besteht."

images of the installation

More information on the installation and the Art Brut and Textile exhibition
Gestrickt, geklebt, geknotet ...
(Knitted, glued, knotted)
Kunsthaus Kannen/Germany
5 June – 25 September 2011

The handkerchief of time

“If you take a handkerchief and spread it out in order to iron it, you can see in it certain fixed distances and proximities. If you sketch a circle in one area, you can mark out nearby points and measure far-off distances. Then take the same handkerchief and crumple it, by putting it in your pocket. Two distant points suddenly are close, even superimposed. If, further, you tear it in certain places, two points that were close can become very distant. This science of nearness and rifts is called topology, while the science of stable and well-defined distances is called metrical geometry. Classical time is related to geometry, having nothing to do with space, as Bergson pointed out all too briefly, but with metrics. On the contrary, take your inspiration from topology, and perhaps
you will discover the rigidity of those proximities and distances you consider arbitrary. And their simplicity, in the literal sense of the word pli [fold]: it's simply the difference between topology (the handkerchief is folded, crumpled, shredded) and geometry (the same fabric is ironed out flat). […]
Sketch on the handkerchief some perpendicular networks, like Cartesian coordinates, and you will define the distances. But, if you fold it, the distance from Madrid to Paris could suddenly be wiped out, while, on the other hand, the distance from Vincennes to Colombes could become infinite.”

Serres, Michel (1995). Conversations on science, culture, and time / Michel Serres with Bruno Latour; translated from French by Roxanne Lapidus. The University of Michigan Press, p.60, 61

more handkerchiefs

Strick-Liesel

"Strick-Guerilla - Die subversive Kraft des Strickens
Sie kommen in der Nacht, wollen verstören, wachrütteln. Sie nennen sich 'Strick' und 'Liesel' - und das ist Programm. Die beiden Künstlerinnen stricken ihre Werke: Plakate, die an strategisch wichtigen Orten in diversen Städten angebracht werden und gegen Atomkraft protestieren. Das Künstlerduo gehört zu einer weltweit agierenden Strick-Guerilla. ttt forscht der subversiven Kraft dieser alten Handarbeit nach."

[Knit-guerilla: the subversive power of knitting
They come in the night, want to disturb, wake us up. They call themselves 'Strick' and 'Liesel' - and that's the program. The two artists knit their works: posters that are put up in strategically important places in various cities in protest against nuclear energy. The artist duo are part of a world-wide movement of knitting guerilla. ttt investigates the subversive potential of this old handicraft.]

Titel, Thesen, Temperamente, ARD/NDR, 3 April 2011
http://www.ardmediathek.de/ard/servlet/content/3517136?documentId=6868262

Flat pack

A flat-packed chair for the installation 300 Spectators by Goett & Hoad. To follow the chair into the gallery and find out more about the work, go to

http://solveighgoett.blogspot.com/search?q=300+spectators

London 26 March 2011 - March for the Alternative

Under a sea of flags and banners half a million people took to the streets of London to protest against the ruthless spending cuts imposed by the UK government.

For images from the march, go to http://solveighgoett.blogspot.com/search?q=26+March+2011