surface: tapisserie Nº1

“What then could the pixels of a fabric be, when in reality what we are looking at is a structure made of intersections? From the start the effects of fabrics take place on two levels that are interconnected, namely the ‘space of texture’, that results from the threads crossing and that produces an elaborate play of shadows, and the effect brought forth by the ‘two-dimensional level of colour’ in the warping. Thus a fabric obviously does not consist of ‘dots’, but of an above and below of the threads that decides on showing or hiding.” *


REW <<
Infiltration – Room. An ideological infiltration.

“Infiltration – Room” an installation was called that ____fabrics interseason realised at the Galerie fuer zeitgenoessische Kunst in Leipzig in 2002. The lattice work of the ceiling was opened in three places and, by means of the kind of chutes used in the building industry, a connection established between the exhibition room and the store rooms above. The floor was covered in black carpeting.

The exhibition was opened with a sound performance entitled “Infiltration” (a live act in cooperation with FON). In total darkness, and accompanied by the sound of heavy breathing (Darth Vader/Star Wars), the musicians crawled underneath the carpet and to their music stands. “The carpet turns into an ego vacuum for the musicians. The asthmatic breathing can be heard until the live act begins. The musicians decide as to what extent they withdraw or present themselves to the audience/the public. After the performance ends, the musicians turn off the neon light and crawl back into the dark OFF. The breathing sets in once again.”**

With “Infiltration – Room” ____fabrics interseason aimed at intruding into given structures, on the one hand through an irritation of the audience’s seeing and hearing habits, on the other hand by interfering with the architectural situation of the exhibition room.


FFWD >>
surface: tapisserie Nº1. A snapshot of movement.

Once more ____fabrics interseason develop a spatial installation in which carpets serve as a medium. This time they do so in the context of the exhibition “Entering A Strange Field” at the Kunstpavillon. As the title suggests, “surface: tapisserie Nº1” seems to rest on the surface. On a low pedestal, assembled out of plain euro-pallets, numerous multi-coloured rag rugs are laid out. Into these oversized rugs, ten to twenty metres long and 220 centimetres wide, ____fabrics interseason have woven the left-over fabrics from their collections of the years between 1998 and 2006, so that the rugs now, in an abstract manner, as it were, form the quintessence of the fashion works of the last eight years and, on a meta-level, communicate the contents inherent in the collections. By the fixing in a stable, long-lasting woven artwork the artists moreover are changing the rhythm***. What used to disappear in an archive twice a year, now is immortalised and the simplest of all weaving techniques, that usually only is reserved for discarded, thread-bare clothing, is revalued and reinterpreted through the precious fabrics from the remnants.

The expansive artwork goes well beyond a physical subsuming or a metaphorical filing of the social, cultural and gender theory contexts the collections are based on. **** Not least through their oversize format the traditionally manufactured, contemporary tapisseries acquire a life of their own. The presentation, reminding us of museum-like wall and floor displays of tapisseries resp. gobelins, has a sculptural feel. The rugs seem to gather momentum inside the room and, starting out from the idea of the classical forms of presentation, as prevailing in museums of applied art, turn into a textile sculpture. The picture rug, as a drapery, flows down the wall. On the floor as well the exhibits do not behave in a manner appropriate to a pedestal in the halls of a museum. Much rather we are reminded of a bazaar in the wake of an onslaught of customers – what remains is a snapshot of movement.  

In addition, the weaving introduces a new body of rules: The surface structures of the various fabrics and materials – from precious silk to plush fake fur – are subjugated by the warp threads of the weaving, adapted to each other optically and haptically, almost neutralised and thus subjected to a strict order.

In “surface: tapisserie Nº1" , just as in “Infiltration – Room”, the intrusion into the given structures determines the thematic orientation. The seeing and reading habits of recipients in this manner shall be irritated and handed-down notions put up for question. Another crucial aspect here, once more, is the desire to interfere with the architectural situation of the exhibition room while realising the installation.

Ingeborg Erhart

* Quoted and translated from Birgit Schneider, Textile Processing – Punkte, Zeilen, Spalten. Vorläufer elektronischer Bildtechniken, in: Beiträge zu Kunst und Medientheorie, Projekte und Forschungen an der Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, Hans Belting and Ulrich Schulze (eds.), Stuttgart 2000, pp. 17f.

**Project description ____fabrics interseason

***The expressions “the rhythm of wear and tear” and “the rhythm of buying” were introduced by Roland Barthes in his book The Language of Fashion (orig. Système de la mode, 1967). To subject traditional costume to a seasonal, fashionable variation (changing colours, prints, weaves, etc.) will result, he claims, in “the birth of a new rhythm”.
 

****The idea that there is a kinship between text and fabric lives on in many figures of speech. The word text goes back to Latin textus that originally meant as much as “to weave” resp. “the fabric”. The verb textere, correspondingly, denotes the activity of weaving and is related to Greek techné (meaning “craft”, “art” or “skill”). 

folder graphics

by susi klocker  

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photography by

günter kresser