The Armory Show wasn’t the only big event in 1913 - it was also the year that suffragists marched on Washington to demand women’s right to vote. In light of that centennial anniversary, which is being celebrated this weekend, and the kickoff of Women’s History Month, it seemed like a good time to present you with this declaration from Nancy Spero.
Nancy Spero letter to Lucy R. Lippard, 1971 Oct. 29. Lucy R. Lippard papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
(via tepidtapwater)
When things start to unravel, they also create momentary connections between meanings. In the chaos of unraveling, a different order of contact is possible.
Jena Osman. “Mapping the Root of Response,” a reflection on Cecilia Vicuna’s show at Art in General, New York, NY, May 19, 1999.
One day I suggested to my desk mate that we change the world. ‘How?’ he asked. By Talking, I told him. ‘But how can conversation change the world?’ ‘Two and two are four and four and two are six,’ I said. ‘All of humanity came from two people. If one person convinces another that injustice is unnecessary, that person will convince someone else, and so on.’ ‘Oh!’ he said, and we started talking to everyone.
Cecilia Vicuna. “The Conversationalists, San Gabriel School, 1960.” From Spit Temple
United by a thread, we form a living quipu: each person is a knot, and the performance is what happens between the knots.
Cecilia Vicuna. “El quipu vivo/ The Living Quipu, Cerlag, Carcas, 2001.”
› Creative Time announces 2012/2013 Global Residency Projects
Very curious to hear reports from Mika Tajima’s upcoming research in India:
From the Creative Time Website:
What happens to textile looms as they are sold from factories in Philadelphia and shipped off to textile-centric cities in India? How can the story of their relocation shed light on the state of the industry in India, where both materials and information are being woven, as well as the current political and economic state?
Tajima plans to trace the flow of global industrial production by following the travels of looms sold from factories in Philadelphia to textile-centric cities in India. She will use this as a lens through which to look at the links between the textile industry that was once predominant in the United States and today’s industry in India, a country with a long history of artisanal weaving now experiencing convulsive industrial and technological development. In Ahmedabad and Bangalore, Tajima plans to connect with both artisanal and high-tech factories.
Nets are connectors, but webs are traps. Webs are connectors, but nets are traps. Weaving is a good metaphor for etymological empowerment (ancient cultures connect at the root of a word and then spin outward), but the art form is also implicated in modern day commercial oppression (sweatshops).
Jena Osman. “Mapping the Root of Response,” a reflection on Cecilia Vicuna’s show at Art in General, New York, NY, May 19, 1999.
…now the whole poem is constructed constructed like two threads
Cecilia Vincuna performing from her book Unravelling Words and the Weaving of Water as represented in Spit Temple, edited and translated by Rosa Alcala
the concept is that the two threads have to be
one spun to the right
the other spun to the left
so that they are in tension like lovemaking
to one another
this is what makes
the weaving
sacred
Writing is a sensorial disorder, she says, arranging her threads. Writing wants to be three-dimensional. Like the khipu… She leafs through a book with thick pages, looking for a poem. The signatures come apart, exposing the threads that bind them together.
Tedlock, Dennis. “Handspun Syllables/Handwoven Words.” Writing about Cicilia Vicuna’s performance at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY, September 27, 1998. From Spit Temple, edited and translated by Rosa Alcala.
…a thread is not a thread
Cecilia Vicuna performing at Hallways Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, NY, September 27, 1998
but a thousand
tiny
fibers
entwined
dissolving in air
a world begins again…
Unfortunately, “Material Matters: The Politics of Making and Materials” conflicted with my own paper presentation.
I was very sad to miss this talk organized by Lisa Vinebaum and Ruth Scheuing. I’ll look forward to reading the proceedings when they are published this Spring. Papers included:
1. Cloth as Economic Product & Cloth as Communication: N. S. Harasha’s “Nations” in
Context, Janis Jefferies, Goldsmiths, University of London
2. Comforter Art Action: A Materialist Review of a Material Aid Art Project, Lois Klassen, Emily Carr University of Art + Design
3. Stealth, Ellen Rothenberg, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
4. Making Relations Material; The Smallest of Politics, Judith Leemann, Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Shannon Stratton, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
5. Reskilling, Luanne Martineau, Concordia University
6. Sustainable Collaborations: Colour Collective, Sarah Gotowka, Carissa Carman, and Johanna Autin, Concordia University
7. The Year that Craft Broke: Performing Political Identities and the Co-option of the
Crafted Aesthetic, Nicole Burisch and Anthea Black, Concordia University
8. Made in Haiti, Carole Lung aka Frau Fiber, University of California State - Los Angeles
Image of Carole Lung’s project, “Made in Haiti” via The Journal of Modern Craft
