weaving Voices 01.04.2025 issuu - Flipbook - Page 65
When examining physical weaving looms, we find various types,
from vertical tapestry looms to simple hand frames, to the intricate
Jacquard looms104 (which utilised punch cards that later served as
inspiration for early computing hardware). Despite their differences,
they all operate using two sets of threads, one vertical and one
horizontal, intersecting at a 90-degree angle. The threads stretched
on the loom are called the warp, and they require tension to facilitate
weaving the threads called the weft. The loom’s structure dictates
the maximum width and length of the woven fabric from the outset.
During the Weaving Voices project, we primarily worked with ‘simple’
looms – straightforward frames without shafts or beams that can be
used to start at any given point within the frame, often for artistic
purposes. In contrast, industrial woven fabrics follow a more linear
trajectory with clear starting and ending points, often involving
precisely calculated and complex patterns.
Among various textile techniques for fabric creation – such as
crocheting, knitting, felting, quilting, and knotting – one could argue
that weaving stands out as the most structured, because the loom’s
structure determines the maximum size of the fabric. In contrast,
felting and crocheting, for example, allow fabric to expand infinitely
in all directions.
In the book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
by philosophers G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, weaving is used as a
model to describe a ‘striated space,’ and felting as a model of a
‘smooth space’.105 A striated space, in their definition, is a controlled,
sedentary, and measured space, while a smooth space is, in principle,
a nomadic space. The latter is infinite, open, and unlimited. Both are
two sides of the same coin and, in fact, only exist in mixture.
A personal weave in progress on a ‘simple’ hand loom in the train from Amsterdam to Reichenow,
January 2023. In an attempt to visualise the beginning of our journey with threads dyed with onion skins
and privet berries.
Growing a weave as if it were a rhizome (2017), ‘A work I made in art school as an attempt to explore and
escape the structured paradigm of weaving.’
104 Jacquard machine (2019) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine [Accessed 30 Jun. 2024].
105 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2005) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by B.
Massumi. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 474–477.
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