Weaving globally, metaphorically and locally - Starting from Hangzhou
Organizers: Department of Fiber Art of CAA, Hangzhou & Textile Art Department of KHIO Oslo
Tutors: Hans Hamid Rasmussen, Dorothee Albrecht, Hege Bratsberg, Anne Knutsen and Song Chunyang
Weaving belongs, along with knitting and pottery, among human culture’s oldest crafts. Ancient textile remains have been found in all parts of the world. But textiles are not only interwoven material. As means of exchange and trade and with their potential to communicate complex layers of social meaning, textiles are directly related to the social fabric.
World Wide Weaving can be used as an area of investigation. It will take place for the sixth time between September, 20 and September 30 , 2016-this time in collaboration with the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou.
On the one hand, textile and crafts open up a field of reference that is globally comprised and linked to human live and culture in general. On the other hand, a multitude of different traditions and practices, techniques and patterns were developed as contributions to local contexts, but also in exchange with traditions and practices from other regions. During the workshop/seminar we will focus on scrutinising fields of reference, constructing contexts and exploring spaces in between.
Starting points for our studies will be the environment around Hangzhou:
1\ JINZE - Jinze Crafts Society
2\ DATANG - town of socks
3\ ANJI - town of bamboo weaving
We’ll ask the students to rethink theoretically and practically their own artistic approach and their art projects in relation to several examples they choose from the three field trips to jinze, Datang, and Anji. The examples can be similar to their own artistic practice, but also very different.
Further theoretical and practical input and examples from other parts of the world can also trigger the projects of the students - the Silk Road for example as an ancient network of trade and cultural transmission connecting the West and East. Other starting points could be the proverbs of ‘The Saying of Needles’ project introduced in the outline of the 2nd Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art.
Another practice could accompany us during the whole time of the workshop. Hege Bratsberg and Anne Knutsen propose Tablet Weaving Explorations. We could start to do tablet weaving for a certain time at different sites of the exhibition. Tablet weaving could become a daily practice during the workshop especially interesting during the excursions connected to different situations in the public space or to sites of textile production.
World Wide Weaving is a space for art and crafts, for presentations, discussions, actions and screenings at the same time theoretical and practical.
We will together unfold a space between the individual projects and interests of the students, textiles, terms and techniques, texts and other materials. The relational frame will be stretched along the interests of the participants. Each contributor is invited to work on and present a special subject area. In this way, we can bring together very different approaches from different times and regions to a common field of inquiry.
As a compilation of the individual projects we will create a ‘Seed Bank of Crafts - Dictionary and Handbook - Assemblage in Space’ exploring the manifold connections between the different examples. Visual and haptic knowledge production will test out other ways of creating orders, other forms of representation.
The common denominator is the globe, seen as an international shared communal space of reference.
Hans Hamid Rasmussen and Dorothee Albrecht, September 2015
World Wide Weaving is an ongoing experimental artistic and educational project - a contraption and area of investigation combining artistic and educational fields. It started in February 2010 hosted by the textile department of KHIO Oslo and took place in several locations, the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, the Nordic Artists’ Centre Dale and at Blaker-Skanse.
The intention of the first World Wide Weaving - Interlinking practices, complex fabrics of relations and their materials ‡ workshop was to extend and to rethink the space of education and production related to art, textile and crafts.
WWW ‡ Make Your Own Dictionary was focused on exploring how art theory, art history and other disciplines intersect and coalesce in the artistic projects of the students.
World Wide Weaving - Weaving with Textiles, Texts, Sounds and Materials opened up a space of inquiry between the different projects of the students related to textile, crafts and sound.
World Wide Weaving - Seed Bank of Crafts connected approaches exploring the contemporary framework of the global world with projects researching and collecting knowledge of traditional or ancient craftsmanship from different parts of the world.
World Wide Weaving - Scrutinizing Fields of Reference, Constructing Contexts, Exploring Spaces In Between started from the Guttorm Guttormsgaard's archives and Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas to explore artistic collections and their displays, variable, non-systematic ordering parameters and the provisional and haptic combination of divergent picture sources and their carrying materials and fixtures.
