All wound up

It was good fun at Espacio Gallery's Anti-Gallery Gallery show last week, sitting and doing things with wool and thread - some people came because they knew what was going on, and others came in off the street, looked at the work on display, and stayed to help wind a memory ball or do some knitting -

Other things were going on too - Pat was inviting people to try printmaking -

and Esperanza was making a fluorescent ball, which she squeezed out the door to sit on the pavement -

My idea for the memory ball is that a person would be enjoying the sweet while winding the wrapper into the ball -

Some of the winders -

Gabrielle and Karin, from Hastings

Two young men from Madrid who now live nearby

Catherine [hope I remembered the name right!] introduced the idea of tearing the wrappers

Shirene also contributed a length of braiding

Knitting instruction was on offer

Viva learned, Agnese already knew how
(note the display of  newly-made prints on the wall)

Later on...

Morwenna with some of her Continuous Making project

Tap performance by members of Women's Tap Rhythm Collective

 After which, more winding -

Christa

Graham

Chloe

In the background, near the window, Caroline's knitting, to which we contributed

The balls are back

On Thursday 22nd January, 1pm-8pm, I'll be bringing my balls - the memory balls, remember those? - to the Anti-Gallery Gallery Show at Espacio Gallery.

It'll be part of this -

Do "come and play and have fun" if you're near Bethnal Green that day! Perhaps the Big Red Ball will make an appearance... but mostly it will be about taking part in winding up a new ball to mark the occasion --  a chance for reflection and a chance for stories....

Big ball of tights

The ball makes a statement - the nylon that tights (pantyhose) are made of isn't recyclable, it goes into landfill - imagine all the tights that are thrown away every year, and imagine how big that ball could get - perhaps not as big as the earth, but huge nonetheless.

"Of all the objects we crafted re-using tights, people seemed to be particularly attracted to our growing ball of tights – they were in awe, touched it, hugged it and reflected on it. The ball attracted a lot of spontaneous interest whilst illustrating the environmental impact of un-recycled tights: the ball may become as big as the Earth!

There is a growing link between clothing and the environment; tights strongly revealed how environmental hazards and risks are getting closer to us. There is no easy way to re-cycle tights and every week millions of pairs of ladies tights are littered. However, we also discovered that environmental campaigns do not need to show dramatic images of pollution and environmental disasters and/or gloomy statistics to make people realise the importance of adopting more sustainable behaviours – it does not need to be scary to touch people profoundly.

A large number of tights contain nylon, a non-biodegradable material that often ends up in landfills. Why don’t we produce biodegradable tights?"

Thanks to Linda for the link.

Balls of string ... and related things

While musing on the "memory balls" I made all those years ago, and wondering if they could morph into some sort of museum project (given the increasingly urgent need to do the homework for the course), I turned to an image-search to see if anything would catch my interest and lead down surprising byways, as so often happens...

29 years of winding string...  (via)

Different types of string balls - largest, most expensive, etc ("All sting balls possess a certain history") - including one wound by pupils of an elementary school in Australia " as a symbol of how their education and lives would always be connected. Each string represented a student and each knot connected one to the other. They tied in mementos as they built their ball of dyed twine. What they ended up with was part art, part history, and part love story. "

Made by pupils of Penguin Primary School (via)

Newspaper recycling by Ivano Vitale - no dyes or glue are used in the yarn ball -

Lin Tianmiao  uses thread wrapping and  balls of thread in her artworks -

The Proliferation of Thread Winding (1995) also contains 20,000 needles (via)

Gillian Collyer's and Janet Kawada's works were briefly mentioned on this blog already -

Janet's 2012 exhibit, Shift in Time, marked 15 years of work about time ... the link includes a time-lapse video - 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, 5 weeks of winding yarn -

Temari are also balls of yarn - but definitely in a league of their own (there's an edible version!) -

On another tangent... a thread wrapping machine (designed by Anton Alvarez) was used to make this -

and these-

And while we're at it, remind me ... why might we need one of these?

Yet another tangent - string art (there seems to be a lot of it about) - this is by Kristin Rauch -

Then, when it all unravels ...

Detail from "Gathering my thoughts" by Susan Lenz

So, after gathering all that together ... could this be the required project for the draft brief for the developing practice course? The next bit is mere thinking aloud; though the writing felt like pulling teeth, it's only here for the record, for my documentation in the style of reflective journaling - feel free to ignore it, and thanks for reading this far! 

(1) At the moment one possibility is doing "something" with the travel lines, perhaps taking them to the Transport Museum and proposing some sort of workshop with staff, along the lines of "look at what I did, now go out and do the same" which, baldly put, doesn't thrill me. Unpacking that, though - "my journey": why did I do what I did? how did it develop? what does it show? how did my understanding of what it showed change? how did it move beyond the page it was written on? - that would be an introduction and would include pix of the various configurations I tried and different journey lengths, and the sketchbook containing my journeys on all the tube lines, alphabetically ... and other things that would hopefully get people thinking this is a fun thing to do and not as barmy as it looks. If you're doing this in the context of an art course, if you're thinking in that art-school sort of way ("this is about time and chance"), it's not particularly barmy ... but to Jo(e) Public it can look daft - hey, a 4-yr-old could do that!

First thing that's needed is a "hook" to interest people in coming along to the workshop. What would they get out of it? All too often people want a visible outcome, something to take home. But this is about encouraging them to go into the world with a little book and a pen and doing it outside in the hostile world, not in the room where everyone knows what's going on. So that's a big hurdle. 

Perhaps if I went along to the museum this line of thinking would become clearer. One thing that intimidates me is the thought (whether it happens or not!) of doing a workshop with strangers in a strange place. Another thing that holds me back is my ulterior motive - to get my Travel Line stuff into the Transport Museum shop ... yet it's this part of the project that any workshop might be linked to. Hmm, it also offers an idea for the "visible outcome" - to find a way to turn participants' "lines" into something usable, eg a travelcard holder. A matter of transferring to cloth, then sewing or gluing together. Needs thought. It would have to be two sessions...

(2) Another project possibility, and the reason for revisiting the memory balls and similar projects with thread and wrapping and time and memory (and memory loss, and thereby identity), is a handling display of various "memory balls" and a "winding session" where people can come and sit and wind and chat. I've done this at a book fair and was fascinated to hear people's stories of winding wool for Auntie, and seeing young people learn this new skill - it does take a bit of physical coordination. Having something to do with the hands seems to get the mouth going and the talk flowing. Except, through being involved in the moment, I can't later remember much of what's been said! That's not a problem because the project would be about what the participants got out of it, though a visible outcome would be the size of balls produced. Each would have the contributions of several people, so it would be a social thing - perhaps the names of each winder would be on a slip of paper inside, or if they could spend longer, it could contain more writing or drawing, say of events in their lives or objects in their childhood home, all wrapped up and kept safe among the continuous thread, perhaps glimpsed as an outer layer or perhaps completely hidden. (It's possible to roll out the ball, rewind the thread, and release all the memories. Then roll them back up again. Ad infinitum.)

I like the "winding thread" idea because it's more "normal", less off-putting, than writing lines. Also it hardly needs an explanation, and it's about the other person - what the activity gives them is a chance to do something different and new, or familiar and evocative. The interaction could be augmented with some stories involving thread/yarn - the minotaur and the labyrinth; penelope and her un-weaving; some of the spinning folktales like Rumplestiltskin; the chinese story about the red thread of connection. I'd find it interesting to see if and how stories could be woven into conversations.

Where could this Thread Story thing happen? Is there something specific in a museum it could be linked to? Could it be a collaboration with an experienced storyteller, eg for kids? How would that work - getting the kids drawing things or choosing words or objects, then wrapping them round with thread, and doing that while they listen to the stories maybe. (Except I'm scared of working with kids - no, let me rephrase that: working with (lively, excited, rambunctious!) kids would definitely be a challenge. Would be an "interesting" challenge...)

(1&2) To end on a positive note - those ruminations give me material for not one but two draft briefs. OK they're preliminary thoughts only, but my understanding is that what's required is preliminary. A bit more thought about possible venues for the thread thing, and a visit to the museum for the travel lines thing, could clarify that. Maybe some headings when writing it up - what, who, where, when, why, how, that sort of thing. Nicely formatted to add credibility. 

Situationists (and memory balls?)

Situationism. A movement that started in 1957 that lasted only 15 years (see http://libcom.org/thought/ideas/situationists). Connected with psychogeography. Influential in the May 1968 insurgencies in France.

" Situationist tactics included attempting to create “situations” where humans would interact together as people, not mediated by commodities. They saw in moments of true community the possibility of a future, joyful and un-alienated society."

When the Situationist International was first formed, it had a predominantly artistic focus; emphasis was placed on concepts like unitary urbanism and psychogeography. Gradually, however, that focus shifted more towards revolutionary and political theory" says wikipedia.

-Relevant to the way that people, in museums that have displays of domestic items, delight in finding the ones they had at home, back then. They aren't purchasing these "old things" but there is "mediation by commodities" nonetheless, how to avoid this...? When I get people involved in winding yarn for the memory balls, this is connection through remembered activity. It's participation, perhaps also involving nostalgia - an active act, not the passive act of looking. The kinesthetic sense is involved, plus touch, plus the sound (faint). Plus the interaction with a stranger.

-Encountered at the breakfast table, as Mr T read an article in Tate Etc (new issue just arrived) about leftist art. I knew the term but could not explain it. Fortunately the article had some good words of succinct explanation:

"The Situationist theory of "The Society of the Spectacle" posits that the mass media have invested inanimate commodities with life and energy while sucking it out of the poor consumer, who can experience the world only by proxy, his desires having been routed through acts of purchase and consumption."

Barbara Kruger - known for billboards

-Names associated with situationism - Guy Debord, Asger Jorn, etc
-Artists using situationist concepts - Barbara Kruger, Victor Burgin,  Banksy, Cildo Mierles.

Arting about

I took some "toys" to the seaside -
- a new sketchbook (A4 size)
- various pens and pencils
- the little watercolour box, long unused
- blue threads

...and had some aims in mind -
- fill the sketchbook
- try out various drawing materials
- collect small objects (on walks) and record them
- make a memory ball with these objects, and include bits of writing

We did spend a lot of time working in sketchbooks - and with a bit of large-brush "surface preparation" in the final pages, my book was completely filled.

On the train journey, I started filling a few pages, playing with the effects of various pens on wet paper -

Wetting paper in various ways was something I subsequently did every day, using seawater, streamwater, rainwater, tea/coffee, even watercolour water -

(click on image to enlarge)

The words were notes about sights and sounds - a non-visual diary.

The main task was to collect and record objects found on walks -

These memorabilia included tags, tickets and receipts, as well as natural things like twigs, pebbles, seaweed -

A visit to Tate St Ives resulted in an unexpected project - to make six drawings from a postcard not of our own choosing. Mine was Terry Frost's "Green, Black and White Movement", painted in 1951, just after he moved to St Ives -

(click on image to enlarge)

These used graphite, wax crayon, acrylic, watercolour, frottage, and collage, in various combinations. The close study of the painting and how its composition works was more rewarding than any of my results. Also it gives a new way to look at boats, in their interconnections.

One morning we set up a still-life -

The practice of looking at how one object related to another was good preparation for the life drawing session we attended that evening (eight poses in two hours, whew!).

Eventually, after seeing Judy using paint to such good effect, I got out the watercolours -

 "It doesn't have to be accurate, it's a reminder of where you were" - true; nor was it possible to get a good photo -

Another unexpected project arose from finding a road atlas of Britain - I cut it up to get pages for making little books, vaguely with a "sea" theme -

 The cut-outs got ever smaller, but eventually the eviscerated book did go into the recycling.

As for the memory ball -- because of its lumpiness, it's more appropriate to call it a memory pebble. I recorded what went into the ball, with a view to making a book showing the process (and the contents).

On the train back home, I wrote down more phrases, intending to cut up the page and make another ball with the remaining thread -

The "written" book/ball will be considerably lighter - there'll be no stones in it.