Poetic Realism

I will be joining an international conference exploring the relationship between architecture and textiles in contemporary design practice. September 24-25, Konstfack, Stockholm. Visit the homepage. The picture shows the book, Textile Architecture by Sylvie Krüger, she will be a speaker at the conference.

Enmeshed: Architecture and Textiles in Contemporary Design Practice, is a multidisciplinary conference exploring the relationship between textiles and textile technology and contemporary architecture and design. Practitioners from textile design, architecture, and interior design, as well as related historians and theoreticians will converge to present perspectives on this topic with the goal of expanding our understanding of the connections between architecture and textiles.

Confirmed speakers include Petra Blaisse (director, Inside Outside, Amsterdam), Patricia Gruits (Kennedy & Violich, Boston), Sylvie Krüger (author, Textile Architecture, 2009), Ulrika Mårtensson, Architect and Textile Designer (Stockholm), Mette Ramsgard Thomsen (CITA/Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture, Copenhagen), David Serero (Serero Architectes, Paris), Rachel Wingfield (Loop.pH and Textile Futures Research Group, UK), and Susan Yelavich (Parsons, New York).

I recently purchased the book Textile Architecture and by being aware about the connection of body and mind when operating with interactivity in my art practice, this book poses a good connection point. Facts about the history of textiles being used in architecture (Bauhaus, Mies von der Rohe, Japanese Houses), materiality and geometric processes of transformation (to use textile techniques in architecture) are a good contribution to the challenge in my project. Different than from our culture of living the eastern civilization has a harmonic embedded understanding of the mind and the body, I think that the genre Architextiles is the last puzzle to the quest of mankind to the nomadism of the body // Toyo Ito, and a good way of how to embed our embodied mind into built architecture.

Excerpt of Atelier Nord:

During 2010 Atelier Nord, in collaboration with Bergen National Academy of the Arts (KHiB) and the Swedish School of Textiles in Borås carries out the project Soft Technology, which is an area of commitment for Scandinavian competence building and exploration of “smart” materials, electronic textiles and textile electronics. Through a series of work labs, seminars and open workshops the possibilities and challenges which lies in the meeting between professional knowledge, new technology and art practice are being explored. Soft Technology is the first project to introduce e-textile to an audience outside the educational institutions in Scandinavia.
As a natural continuation of the project, Atelier Nord plans a travelling exhibition in 2011. The exhibition will show current international works using or based on e-textiles and e-textile techniques. The exhibition will tour all the Scandinavian countries. First show will be at Galleri Soft in Oslo in April 2011.
Smart materials are responsive and dynamic. They can change colour, shape and size according to the surroundings. Many of them also have the ability to remember their original condition or return to it.
Electronic textiles are textiles where electronic components are incorporated in the textile material, either by seam, weaving, pressure or other techniques.
Textile electronics are textile materials with characteristics corresponding electronics or elctro-mechanic components like weaved circuits, sewn sensors, live threads and fibres, pigments reacting to light, sound, pressure, heat or humidity.
E-textiles are used as a collective term for all the above mentioned.

Living in Dale i Sunnfjord, i cherish the contact to the artist at the Nordic Artist Centre. I recently met Gabi Schillig, architect and conceptional designer. Being one of the autors of the book Performative Geometries, her interest lays in “questioning this static production” (of architecture) ,” control and state of space by investigating geometrical organization and textile materiality, mapping social relations of and in space, merging insights from architecture, art, fashion design and body performance”. The book is about “analyzing textile techniques and their underlying geometrical spatial appearance”. The intersection point of architecture, body and space (-urban space) has been keeping me busy and has been the main interest in ma MA thesis “Home sweet Home isnt´t it”. In this book I see valuable answers that can enrich the genre architextiles.

Welcome to Vevringutstillinga exhibition at Vevring, Norway, Friday 17th til Sunday, 11:00 til 18:00. Two of my works will be exhibited, the digital weave tapestry The Glacier and Fjord, Baby! – a Video/Textile Installation as a tribute to Vevring.