A Walk for Terminalia with Thread and Word - Some context for our walk .

This walk takes place February 23rd in Seasalter, on the Kent Coast.

http://terminaliafestival.org you can check the festival out and find us under events.

Inti

As I prepare for this walk with Thread and Word there are some  connections that I have made over the last week that have contributed to my thinking about this walk that I thought would be worth sharing.  I mostly carry these ideas around in my head and have found that writing these ideas down does clarify my thinking as I try to explain them. Although I have to admit some ideas are a leap of faith and associated with feelings you carry in your heart as you will no doubt gather if you read this.



The first has been connecting my thoughts about the solar panels proposed for the landscape in Seasalter with the  Inca deity' s  Inti, the God of the Sun, and Mama Pacha, Mother Earth . I was born in Bolivia and grew up in Lima, Peru. At school we learnt about the Incas probably in the same way as children in England learn about the Romans. So I tend to draw on this bank of knowledge using the mythic method, a method identified  by TS Eliot and James Joyce, which draws on myth from the past as a way to help us connect with the present.

Today I walked in Seasalter and thought about how important it is to feel this connection with the earth and the sun. In Peru there are no figures for Mother Earth (Mama Pacha), aside for those made to sell to tourists, as Andean people believe she can be felt in every place, at every moment and in every living being.  Where do the thousands of solar panels proposed for this site fit in to this scenario, I wonder?

Andean people still believe strongly in the importance of living in harmony with nature and not taking too much from Pachamama. How will Mother Earth change if the rays of the sun are diverted from the land and harnessed as energy ? I am not against a greener energy but as I walked I wondered how much energy do we really need? Should we reflect on our role as consumers ? Where are the boundaries to our consumption?




There are ten of us walking to celebrate Terminus, the Roman God of boundaries. We will be reading poetry, listening to music and meditatively knotting ropes. I have made the ropes for this walk by hand in my studio , they are in the photo on the right.

This practice also derives from my knowledge of the Incas and the records that they kept through a system of knotted ropes called Quipus. To this day the village members, who are trained in their roles as  Quipucamayocs in villages in the Andes, are able to read the knotted ropes that our text based society is unable to translate. Although there are theories and explanations offered by researchers and anthropologists there is still a mystery in the artefacts which I love.







We will reflect on our thoughts at the end of the walk when we attach our knotted ropes to our Vara ( Pole) . Below is the Vara I have made for this walk with a strap that I have woven on an inkle loom . The weave is symbolic of the land we will be walking around and I will explain this on the walk.

A Vara for Terminalia

This Vara (Pole) will then join the collection of 12 Varas in my studio.I have been leading walks and assembling these Varas since 2015.  Each Vara holds the ropes knotted as a record of a particular walk which I have led supported by friends, academics and artists.


I would like to thank all those who are joining me on this walk and giving their support in making the Vara contributing to an exchange of ideas, meditative knotting and poetry writing in the pub at the end. This is the first time we will take the Vara on the walk with us and then put the ropes on to the Vara together as a group. I usually take the ropes back to my studio and then assemble it there on my own. I think it will add to the ritual of the walk and am looking forward to seeing how this develops.

I am hoping that our poetry writing will be taking a leaf out of ecopoetics as described by the founder of the ecopoetics journal Dr Jonathan Skinner (Warwick University)  who will be joining us on this walk. We will be locating our poem in and through  the 'site' rather than kinds of 'writing':

"Taking writing out of the classroom, the bookstore and the library even out of the book itself shifting the focus from themes and styles to an institutional critique of green discourse itself  and to an array of practices converging on the oikos, the planet earth that is the only home our species currently knows"(1).

 I'm looking forward to seeing what we come up with.

Looking forward to celebrating Terminalia with you all on Saturday!


(1) https://jacket2.org/commentary/jonathan-skinner

Pilgrimages, Shrines, Walking, Making Labyrinths and Story Telling.

In her talk at the conference  Beyond The Pedestrian: Walking in Research, Theory, Practice and Performance in Liverpool on July 26th Professor Dee Heddon stated that we learn by being in conversation with each other and outside our own comfort zones.

I found this re-assuring as I'm often working on things without really understanding where it's taking me, often involving other people (who I thank for their forbearance as I cannot sometimes explain what I am doing or where it is going)  and then ...hey presto, 

This is what I love about what I do and drives me on.

I'll be at  4WCOP in Huddersfield on September 8th, with Sonia Overall, Treading and Threading the Labyrinth, Walk-threading-and-treading-the-labyrinth

Then, on  to Walking with Shrines at The Margate Bookie on September 29th  .

walk-with-shrines

With artists, creators and makers: Sara Trillo. Virginia Fitch, Diana Lane, Maggy Rodd, Anna Bowman (filming), Simon (Half Day Holidays), Anastasia Miller (photography)

authors :
Jessica Kidd , Mr. Flood's Last Resort
Philip Whitely, Marching on Together
Owen Lowery, Transition Poetry (performance)
Elise Valmorbida, Madonna of The Mountains

 Finally  on to "Friends of Interpretable spaces" at St Augustine's Church, Hackney in October, for some more Labyrinth building with Sonia Overall,

  http://www.degreesof-freedom.com curated by Degrees of Freedom details to follow.

 I am taking a little time to reflect on the domino effect which allows one thing to lead to another. Enjoying the journey.

Slow Looking - Exploring the relationship between weaving, threading, walking and the landscape .

A long Walk to Nowhere, through Thread and Word 

part of the Whitstable Biennale Satellite programme 2018

A visual reflection on a walk for the Whitstable Biennale Satellite program with Thread and Word.

Thinking with Thread and Word

Signage 

Instructions 

with thanks to Kate Monson and all who came, joined and contributed to a truly memorable walk.
Photography courtesy, Jennifer Deakin.

Join us on our next walk , Walking with Shrines at the Margate Bookie
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walk-with-shrines-tickets-48830648785

Some thoughts on walking, weaving and how we share stories.

Supporting the walk in July by The Refugee Tales :   http://refugeetales.org/book-for-refugee-tales-walk-2018/ 

An Introduction.

Each of the textile birds that will be displayed in my Tankerton studio on June 9th as a part of the Whitstable Biennale Satellite program has been made in a collaborative effort at several venues. The bird cutting and making  began in February of this year to  highlight the walk in July by The Refugee Tales and the campaign by the Gatwick Detainees Welfare group, #time4atimelimit.

The scope of the work includes printing material, making ropes, cutting birds, sewing and embroidering. From locations as wide as Edinburgh, Nottingham, Shepherds Bush, Putney, Tooting, Wandsworth, Whitstable, Broadstairs, Margate, Cliftonville, Wimbledon, Gatwick, Sussex and Canterbury. 

You can now join us at the Whitstable Satellite on June 9th from 1 pm to view a small exhibition of the work at my studio in Tankerton.  

If you wish, you can then take part in a rope making workshop followed by a walk. 

The workshop and the walk event are free but ticketed on eventbrite as numbers are limited : 

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/thread-and-word-tickets-46450161684 

Through this photo diary, and by reflecting on some of the recent events over the last couple of weeks, I will attempt to explain how the walking, the weaving and the storytelling are interconnected.

Rope making at Hazelfest Wandsworth              

May 20th 2018 

Hazelfest is a community festival organised by The Work and Play Scrapstore  at the Hazelhurst Estate in Wandsworth. 

We made rope, celebrating all that binds us together through Thread and Word . 

This gave us the opportunity to meet each other and invite collaboration. As we made the rope , rope making as in most weaving takes a little time to set up, we talked.

We talked about the things that bind us together and in particular how we find strength in working together.

 



















 It was also a useful tool to discuss and highlight the work by the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group and their walk in July, RefugeeTales. This walk enables the accounts of  those who have experienced detention the UK to be heard through an annual walk over three days. In the evenings  Refugees are invited to share their tales. The project takes inspiration form ‘The Canterbury Tales. The Refugee Tales are published by Coma Press.   

For out project, the weaving of ropes allows us to explore combinations of different materials most of which have been donated. I feel this is important as they contain the memory of touch and have been passed from hand to hand.

The twines and threads we use  have their own memory as we find out by coiling the strands together. and watching the  furling and unfurling. 

Ropes and knots enable us to think about language and how emotions and memory are connected to ropes and knotting. We will for example ,sometimes refer to having a knot in our stomach to describe being nervous or tense.

As we weave these ropes we are also creating a textile language to share our stories.

A Workshop on May 22nd 

at The Work and Play Scrapstore 

The rope making at Hazelfest was followed by a workshop on Tuesday May 22nd at The Work and Play Scrapstore where the lovely volunteers spent time stitching birds and ,again, talking about the “Windrush”generation, the work of the Gatwick Detainee Welfare group and Refugee Tales.

We also took this opportunity to play with ideas of how to display the embroidered birds. One idea seen below is  to use the hand made ropes .

Our display takes its inspiration  from many sources including the book Stitching Resistance. 

I am finding weaving a useful tool to consider how we present our work and our stories. As a result I have decided to title this exhibition: Weaving Resistance.

The exhibition: Weaving Resistance

 Part of The Whitstable Biennale Satellite program,
 from 1 pm, on June 9th 66 Marine Parade Tankerton.                        

Tim Ingold in his book ‘Lines’ explains the connections between  weaving, and storytelling. 

“Just as the weaver’s shuttle moves back and forth as it lays down the weft, so the writer’s pen moves up and down, leaving a trail of ink behind it. But this trail, the letter-line, is no more the same as the line of text than is the line on a tapestry the same as the lines of its constituent threads. As with the woven tapestry, when we look for the text-line we do not find it. It exists neither as a visible trace nor as a thread. Rather, it emerges ... “  (Ingold 2007a: 69-70).

And so our stories are emerging slowly through talking and making to be shown at the the exhibition of works in my Tankerton Studio as part of The Whitstable Biennale Satellite Program.

The Walk  

June 9th 

3.18 pm, low tide, meet outside my Tankerton studio .

The walk we will be taking along the Estuary at low tide will follow on from the exhibition “Weaving Resistance”. It will  start at 3.18 pm, which is low tide, from outside my studio facing Tankerton Slopes. This walk also takes its inspiration from Tim Ingold . Our walk will be “wayfaring” rather than following a point from A to B we will drift, creating a meshwork of routes.

Before starting the walk we will be weaving ropes in my studio. These ropes will become part of our walk both as impediment and also as memory aids to record our thoughts through knots in the ropes as we walk . Through various obstacles which we will use to disrupt a linear trajectory we will explore displacement disorientation and the difficulties of negotiating a complex world.

 We will use different tools to create a challenging environment. One for example will be to take instructions designed for a different space and attempting to execute these in the liminal space left as the water recedes. We will also be playing with concepts of time, by using our own system devised for measuring the length of time we have been walking. 

With thanks to Rita Pagnoni Kate Monson Jennifer Deakin The Garden Gate Project Wandsworth Arts Fringe Putney Pantry The Work and Play Scrapstore #Hazelfest Janet Gilbert Nicola Weir Helen Read Maggy Rodd Cath Mattos Debbie Jackson Myra Vasdekys, Elainna Arkeool, and all who have participated and supported sewing, talking and rope making.

I’d also like to say  thank you for supporting me in raising awareness of the campaign by The Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group and for  coming on this journey with me exploring the connections between weaving, walking and writing.

Looking forward to June the 9th.