Caring Cloth Praxis: Ethics of Loss, Practices of Remembering

Authors

Suzanna James, Royal College of ArtFollow

Date of this Version

2024

Document Type

Presentation

Citation

Textile Society of America 2024 Symposium

Shifts & Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles, November 12-17, 2024, a virtual event

Comments

Published by the Textiles Society of America

Copyright 2024, the author. Used by permission

Abstract

This research, in continual development as a part of early PhD study, is currently entitled ‘Ethics of Loss, Practices of Remembering’ and locates itself within the field of cultural sustainability. It is foregrounded by my MA thesis entitled ‘Caring Cloth’ and works in response to the words of Louise Bourgeois: ‘the needle is used to repair damage, its claim to forgiveness.’ My own socially and environmentally regenerative textiles practice considers the way in which personal practices of remembering can be developed in response to cultural sustainability.

This textiles practice develops explorative visual textile art and social textile practice research which physically unravels cloth as one methodology of care-led textiles practice, creating delicate and fragile woven fragments, and considers how to develop a praxis which creates an ethics of loss and its practices of remembering.

Cloth is positioned as a spokesperson and language in this praxis, referencing the work of Jacqueline Millner and Jessica Hemmings. Connected to the work of supervisory team Professor Lucy Orta, and Dr Francesco Mazzarella, the research asks, ‘how do personal practices of remembering create a methodology for cultural sustainability?’ Connecting care and ecology, thinking includes materials - found, remembered, handmade - and migrated materials, and practices, which have the potential to heal cultural, ecological and personal loss through memory. The research aims to contribute to a methodology of care-led, interdisciplinary, autoethnographic research, through making and writing practice.

This work keeps in mind the necessary deconstruction of the assumed associations and obligations that exist in-between women, care and textile making. It considers the symposium theme of 'repair', departing from an enquiry into the social role of needle-based practices, and the inherent relationship between these practices, care, and repair. The research considers what within these needs to be unravelled, and maybe, constructed anew.