Short Abstract:

This lab proposes to work with material that can be woven through a warp and a weft to ask how anthropology constantly tells stories or produces the ethnographic by doing the same thing, again and again, yet differently.

Long Abstract:

Can rhythm provide an impulse for thought? If we engage in an act of doing and undoing of threads, does that allow the possibility of a multiplicity of stories to emerge? This lab will involve working with thread and wool and making rhythm with our hands and bodies following the principle of warp and weft, much like a theatre workshop. The principle of warp and weft is to work with opposites in making anything. While on the one hand we will use material to weave a pattern or a semblance of it, on the other, we will also work on creating rhythm through our bodies in space. We invite participants to engage in both these embodied activities and use impulses that emerge from the weaving of threads and movement of bodies to think of thematic content to write. If images form through patterns, can we combine those patterns with a certain rhythm. If there are rhythms that emerge, can that be an impulse to make a certain kind of pattern? What we will essentially do in the room is play with thread, rhythm and patterns and use that as an impulse or a trigger to write texts. We will also eventually read texts out while playing with pattern and rhythm and see what kind of a sensorial experience that creates. This lab then is essentially about using our sense of pattern and rhythm to think through thematic content we write or would like to write about.