Elisabet Yanagisawa Avén
Senior Lecturer, Fashion and Costume, Textile Department, Konstfack University College of Arts, Craft and Design, Sweden
The fold – time, space and sensibility
This artistic research project is a KU-project from 2007, (Artistic development project) which consists of two parts; one written part and one part which consist of three works in new media and textile. By moving the material away from the body, and forming it as a fold- or a plain surface- the textile fold constitutes a metaphor for different models of thinking. With inspiration from Gilles Deleuze’s method of dramatizing, ‘The Fold – Leibniz and the Baroque’ an associative thinking has started and the project examines different concepts which deals with Time, Space and Aesthetic Sensibility.
One of the aims has been to find an important point of contact between two elements; 1) textile as a material and experience, and 2) techniques, both old and new, especially real time interaction. An additional aim has been to make an investigation in the specific field where non-verbal artistic methods are an important part of a long and rich tradition – in Japanese Aesthetics. Among many discussions in the project are: Heideggers ‘Das Geställ’; East and West and the concept of ‘The Other’; Aspect of poetry is discussed with examples from Rainer Maria Rilke, and his time and space oscillations; The Textile Field as a relationship to existential matters.
These disparate subjects meet in a juxtaposition, ‘ The Fold’ as a metaphor. The whole process is an artistic investigation throughout different fields; velocity, conceptualism, materiality, theory and practice. The third aim of the project is to investigate the relationship between theory, method and artistic practice in an artistic research project. All parts are including in the parallel processes, thread by thread, like a weaving technique, the fabric is growing to a huge draping upon a projection is screened.
Questions:
- How can theory and practice be integrated in an artistic research project, so the practical artmaking part is not illustrations of the theory?
- Would concepts from the Japanese aesthetics provide new perspectives of artistic knowledge to the field of artistic research? To art?
- How can an art project make use of interactive technique to enrich the artistic quality?
