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Lab short abstract

A creative, hands-on lab, transforming Icelandic sheep fleece into yarn, engaging making-as-method to explore bodily/sensory forms of knowledge production. Through material play, learning, and making, we reflect collectively on the generative possibilities of thinking-with-materials.

Lab long abstract

This experimental lab uses Icelandic wool as a methodological provocation for the possibilities of anthropological thinking in a polarised world. Moving beyond discursive approaches, participants engage tactilely with fleece, roving, and yarn to generate knowledge about difference, tension, and connection within their own research fields and the field of anthropology more broadly.

The lab begins with unstructured sensory encounters: participants handle fibre forms freely, noticing impulses, gestures, and the reciprocal nature of material engagement. Through collective reflection, we consider how these interactions illuminate the polarities in our work—in the field, theoretical frameworks, within ourselves as researchers, in our academic institutions, and with non-academic parties.

Participants then learn pencil spinning, transforming loose fibre into yarn through movements of the body and simple tool use. This making process becomes a space for thinking-through-hands about polarity itself: twist and counter-twist, tension and release, individual fibres becoming collective structure. Working in pairs, participants then ply their spun fibres together, negotiating tension, direction, and the resistance of materials that must cooperate to become something new.

The lab offers a creative format that expands traditional anthropological practice by foregrounding craft knowledge, sensory engagement, and the generative possibilities of making-as-methodology. Participants leave with a material artifact of collaborative practice and methodological insights for engaging with polarisation.

Photographic documentation of the lab will be shared online for all conference participants to engage with.

Material requirements: fleece, roving, yarn, pencils (provided by facilitator).

Registration link: https://forms.gle/UxYFUqdtV8x9P1Pr8