This workshop examines ways in which an industrial carpet-tufting gun—used in this case as a mark-making tool—raises questions about art and textile methods and materials. It investigates the tufted surface as a site of graphic and technical transformation which opens up possibilities for the drawn mark. This project poses important questions about method, concepts of labour, distinctions concerning cultural value, and asks how we assemble these notions through language to articulate textiles into discrete objects and designate ‘skill’.
It identifies recurring issues within textile discourse such as established traditions of craft production and an inevitable drive towards commodification. This project will confront these issues and seek alternatives to these problems through a process of technical and interdisciplinary experimentation echoing Alois Riegl’s notion of Kunstwollen, or artistic will, a conceptual tool for establishing equity between art objects and asserting horizontality to creative labour practices.
The workshop participants will produce a tufted ‘drawing’ with the carpet gun aiming to bypass established formats or genre within textile discourse—modes of production defined by how we consume them—re-articulating the carpet as an object to a material process where tufted wool performs an equivalent role to paint and allows the surface to function outside the confines of traditional textile scrutiny and into larger interdisciplinary discourse beyond genre.
This collaborative workshop asks if the operational mutation from carpet-tufting gun into mark-making tool can reveal a sense of otherness existing beyond conventional applied arts objectives and principles related to technique and use. By using a commercial manufacturing device this way, we move away from the carpet as a point of contact between producer and user, re-articulating the tufting gun as a counterpoint to how we discuss the construction of content and the individualism of the artist’s voice.
12
Saturday 12 May 2018
3-4pm
Textiles of Categorical Will:
Christian Newby
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