Where: GDA Summer Sessions De-Modernizing Design, ArtEZ Arnhem, The Netherlands
Total duration: 1 day
A talk and short workshop on mending as a practice of interdependency. After my talk, participants are invited to do a sensorial mapping exercise - a metaphorical mending activity. One blindfolded participant is paired with another participant who is sighted. The sighted participant guides the blindfolded around the building to what the sighted participant thinks is sensorially interesting. After ten minutes, the roles are swapped and the exercise done again. The idea is to deactivate sight so that other sensorial universes opens up. The experience may awaken fear, but also learning to trust becomes more urgent. This exercise mends the connection to body, de-centering sight as a main mode of navigating, and explores trust and reciprocity. The second exercise is to do a literal mending activity. Participants bring in their damaged clothes or textile items into class. In pairs they swap and mend each other’s pieces, telling each other how it was damaged and what kind of mend they want for the piece. This exercise is to share stories about damage and care. It is an experimental talking cure for your clothes. The exercise asks for active listening so that the other person’s needs for mending is met and therefore trust and reciprocity is practiced. It is also exercising craft as embodied knowledge and allowing tacit knowledge to roam freely as it is so rarely encouraged in an academic setting. It is also meditative.