weaving Voices 01.04.2025 issuu - Flipbook - Page 32
of a weave thus becomes a musical composition – requiring a musical leader
(or the group collectively) to set the rules in advance. This can be a game, like
the ones mentioned before as illustrations of the KOMP method, but it can also
become a performance piece. On the metaphorical level, the more weaving we
did, the more we realised that the way the horizontal and vertical threads join
together in space to make a strong and firm piece of textile, is perfectly in sync
with how collective composition methods work, with the singers and their input
being the individual threads, joining their voices together in the many different
possible ways to create a compact, solid sound and musical form.
Community weaving and collective composing are therefore both perfect
measures for the process of joining individual inventiveness and imagination
to form a new piece of art. They go hand in hand, in the same way that women
used to sing together in the spinnery and in the same way that we continued to
compose new lyrics for a repetitive Georgian song, as we wove into the night
on our community loom.
“We are all artists” (Joseph Beuys)
Throughout our two-year journey, engaging with each other and with different
communities, the same questions kept arising: Where does art begin? And,
when can we consider a work or piece as artistically valuable? Essentially, our
principle is to understand art as basic human expression. How we perceive it
afterwards – as an outside audience – complicates the entire picture. When any
kind of context appears (or disappears), or where the piece is put in different
perspectives, or the (art)work becomes functional (and vice versa: the functional
becomes an act of artistic expression), that is when questions and debates arise.
As creators we concentrate on the story and the experience we live through,
during the weaving and/or the voice work. Labelling artists as amateur,
professional, civilian or people in therapy misses the point, as well as obeying
the capitalist and consumerist view of whatever kind of situation is acceptable
as art or even ‘good art’. In other words, we consider art to be highly subjective,
and as long as there are debates, fruitful conversations that allow us to pay
attention to each other and grow together, we are on the right track.
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