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Accepted Paper:

Fiber-mnemonics  
Annika Capelán (Aarhus University and University of Cape Town)

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores ethnograhpically how wollen fiber figures and reconfigures modes of rememberance. It suggests that fiber, as it is skillfully worked and transformed, points in different directions of memory, and that this in turn affects emergent values in 'art' and 'science'.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on a study where woolen fibre is followed through different sites: for instance, in sheep shearing on the South American Pampas, a spinnery and an art collection where it appears as a work of art. By looking ethnographically into processes of transformation of woolen fiber, the paper explores how fiber figures and reconfigures modes of remembrance. It suggests that the fibre, as it is skillfully reworked washed, carded, combed, spun, dyed and knitted into a particular sweater that is presented as a work of art, tells different living 'hi/stories' that point in different directions of memory/forgetting. This in turn plays on shifting tensions between the notions of irreversibility and progress that affects values in art or science as given onto-political categories but that also bring out the figuring of 'art' or 'science' as emergent mnemotechnic ontologies.

Panel P13
Arts of memory: skilful practices of living history
  Session 1