http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 Unwrapping The Gift Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:56:28 +0000 a-n rss generator a-n The Artists Information Company and contributors edit@a-n.co.uk technical@a-n.co.uk http://www.a-n.co.uk/img/logo.gif http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 Here are the two projects that my R+D are based on developing this year– The Loom :from Text to Textile (2005)  -  a live, networked textile installation and Mother to Mother (2006) , an online Garden of Values. This blog  will run until the end of the year when I  plan to have ready two touring models of projects which draw on the strengths of but are very distinct from the original artworks. The emphasis is on how to deepen and expand the scale of meaningful audience participation which is so central to my work while sustaining the intimacy of contact within the artwork itself.It is also a personal journey into another way of practising as an artist as these two projects (which were major departures from my previous work) were very much informed by two major life events which happened  close in succession in 2004– the birth of my first child and the death of my mother three weeks later in the Asian Tsunami . These experiences are documented in my personal blog www.alinahazadeh.blog.uk)/ .Three years on, I am moving out of the orbit of the trauma and wonder of these events - as my mother's spirit moves out of the orbit of the earth, according to Islamic tradition - and am looking to what will inform this next phase of practice. Its almost four months since I had my second child, Moses, and wondering how I will negociate my time and commitment to my work  whilst being a mother to two children.Gone are the days of hours to spend in a studio, it’s a different game now  and much more focused due to time constraints and the emotional energy available; the rage and passion is now far more bound up with my children, but the work remains an essential channel for those other parts of my identity that crave communication with wider cultural, social and spiritual networks and desire to make a difference in a world beyond the domestic – an ambition that can be inspiring and infuriating and often complex to manage.So I see this process as a slow unwrapping of a gift given to me which I uncover, blindfold, in your presence, and I hope you will be able to follow and comment on and support my process in whatever way you feel moved to. The idea of The Gift as an interactive process apon which one of these future artworks maybe based, will also figure largely in my thinking and experimenting.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999  Arts Practice and Motherhood ; a lot can be done while children sleep, quietly in the kitchen... ready to feed at any point, so very present to the time I have and making the most of it, even if my body would like to sleep…I had my first meeting at Goldsmiths last week, the team at Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles  are supporting me in my research to develop The Loom Project (Professor Janis Jefferies is my curatorial mentor).This support began last October with them exhibiting the textile which was woven in 2005, as part of their Symposium ‘'Touch, Textiles, Technology:Collaboration across Europe', where I gave a paper on the project and made some brief but fertile contacts – more on these later. I took Moses up in the sling and over tea traced out a few starting ideas  for areas I want to explore , which are;1. A closer look at the relationship between textiles and the narratives of cultural displacement in – particularly - Middle Eastern culture.(OR… Why the Magic Carpet Flies….)2. Social interaction with cloth ..historical and contemporary practices.( OR..the Poetics of Touch in a communal context…)3. Gift theory  -in general and also specifically the gifting of woven artefacts as social exchange, the magical/godly power of woven objects and related value systems. (OR…why we give and receive from other human beings and how this informs person-to-person contact within the context of the artwork).4. Wrapping and binding as a ritual practice. I have made work before using these techniques , now time to look into it properly and how it can inform this process.The density of possible research is overwhelming but these are a solid starting point.Searching four pages deep into Google using these keywords above, I found a precious jewel of an article, Textile Routes by Lesley Millar . going to print out and absorb while Moses naps tomorrow afternoon hopefully. Thinking Dates with Myself are the current strategy…I will write up what came out of the meeting tomorrow …this post seems dense enough with info, time to rest the head.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 Just to headline the feedback and leads I got at the Goldsmiths kick-off meet at the CHRRCT: I will be looking at different uses of the metaphor of the textile, beyond those I already explored in my pilot piece. Also, I will explore different reasons for using textile to communicate, political info, religious experience etc. Margaret showed me an Afghan Warrug from their textile archive in the flesh, I have only seen these online; a Beluchi tribe rug made woven during the Soviet invasion, crammed full of symbols communicating what was happening to the country. This also happened in Chile during Pinochet. These artefacts were able to be shipped out of the country unnoticed mainly because they were made by women and were woven (a predominantly female practice, also ‘unthreatening.’.). They are beautiful but also sinister, loaded with meaning and the urge to communicate an often disturbing state of play. We spoke about my previous trials in and urge to continue to wrap and bind objects, and I will be looking into this practice in various cultural contexts. There is a thread that connects The Loom project, my interest n Gifting and this desire to wrap my deceased mothers cutlery and rice cookers in kilim wool, and it leads somewhere… Margaret and Julie mentioned a few examples related to this , one in the UK in the Celtic tradition, the tying of objects to trees (for mourning? healing?), even handbags, which then, due to the lime in the water, get fossilised and transformed into something else. Julie mentioned a visitor to the Loom textile show , a woman who had participated online in the project and come in asking where her husband was in the textile and was quite distressed to not be able to pinpoint exactly where his information was woven in. Although it is technically possible to do this, this was not the emphasis of the piece. This raises the question of how much the piece allows for the total loss of identity into the work, a metaphor for the loss of the same at the point of death. I still feel that unity and the power of the collective within the final work is the priority, but I do recognise that the experience of touch (the woman had not participated in the installation where she would have been able to write a ribbon to her husband and read and touch others contributions) should play more of a part in the work, for a longer timeframe. To physically connect with the emotional energy absorbed into a cloth or woven object as it grows seems to me to provide the possibility of this. Unfortunately Janis Jefferies (my mentor on this stage of the  project) was unable to be at the meeting, but I am hoping writing up my process in this way will allow a dialogue with her  and others which can take place intermittently until we next meet.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999  This week; the concept of Gratitude and Gifts begin to mirror themselves in my daily experience. 1. My friend Adrienne Campbell, an inspired eco-activist and writer who also lives here in Lewes, introduced me to The 'Work That Reconnects' of Joanna Macey, a Buddhist and  'Deep Ecologist' who works with groups of people to process on an inner level what is happening in the current ecological crisis (which she calls 'The Great Turning'). There is so much inspiring stuff in her work, but one thing pertinent to me was her talking of ‘Gratitude as a Revolutionary Act’. She speaks of gratitude as a ‘stance of the soul’, a ‘primal movement of all traditions', not dependent on external circumstances and therefore immediately useable as a way of transcending the present moment. I have used this tool recently to get me through the darkest moments of my post-natal recovery and I know that it will inform the work that will be developed from one of these project seeds. There is a lot more, but I wanted to introduce her, am going to order her book. Macey says ‘what people most need to hear is inside them’, which is an obvious and relevant statement, very elegantly put. I think it’s also the dynamic behind the processed I have taken people through in the Loom and Mother to Mother and I want to sustain this approach. 2. A great artist friend, Willow Winston, who I have collaborated with on films/ the Loom and who mentored me on the installation, showed me her new piece of Book art, a really extraordinary book in the form of a Hand, inspired by and exploring personal experiences of Giving and Receiving. I will post photos at some stage if she will let me, but just to say that it resonated with me on a deep level, as it is a theme, which keeps offering itself up, and this was a gift in itself. It also underlined my need to start making again, using my hands as part of this research process… and Willow reminded me that ‘we don’t need to understand to create, but create to understand’. She suggested short sharp sketchbook work daily, to allow my subconscious as well as my conscious intellectual mind to express itself on this journey. It was a real relief to start this, and ‘be open to a narrative that will emerge’ rather than try and construct one. And it provides a quiet moment of reconnection amid the currently intense experiences of being with my two young children. More tomorow, it's time for a night feed for Moses soon.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 I have been carrying around Lesley Millar’s Textile Routes, it is such a rich text : ‘I have been told that for most people in the Middle East a piece of material is everything. It is what you carry with you everywhere, like a nomad. It is your personal tent in some ways. It protects you from everything. You can wrap up, you can sleep on the sand. It has many, many purposes, a large material that also doesn’t take much space. You can carry it in one hand’. It is this sense of something more practical and yet still magical which I would like to be a quality of the new project, in the experience of those who participate.  Also, this leads to thinking about Middle-Eastern refugee and asylum experiences , as they will be my specific point of audience engagement for this next stage of the Loom project.  It occurs to me that in fact it’s not human stories that I have been directly interested in representing per se, they are so personal and fragile.. although it IS these stories that will inspire any shared experience within an engaged environment. It is, in fact, the uncovering and acknowledging of the primary emotion behind a life-changing experience (whether past or present) which performs the transformative work of the piece and is at the heart of what I have been doing these last three years. There is something in the alchemical nature of live interaction within both projects that I have witnessed happening, that can/has transformed some people’s relationship to an experience  of pain – and that has been at the core of the work. It is the space between the threads of the cloth. I am working out the nature of the threads themselves in this process.  The visceral quality of a textile-based work to communicate something unspoken, trans-culturally, its fluid nature as a messenger of meaning is why I am so attracted to it, though still so much a lay person in the practice of any skill related to it. Today I was reminded by my (English) grandmother that she trained and worked from a young age at a Milliners, doing alterations etc and she used to take me along when I was a baby to work with her, while my (Iranian) mother was off briefing her ‘Crochet Ladies’ on her patterns for dresses for Harrods in the 60’s.I had forgotten this connection to cloth was on both sides of the family, it is comforting, and makes sense given my attraction to the medium.  “Cloth and Human experience’ arrived today, also Kruger’s ‘Weaving the Word’. I am planning to carve out some child-free time to read these as they will I think provide some more sparks of light…... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 Tonight is the first time in 18 days I have found a quiet moment to write. This separation between myself and my practice (as of from a lover) has been created through various circumstances involving children, illness, and my partners new day job. The terrifying vacuum this has created in terms of the absence of my Self from the dialogue I was beginning to create became so problematic for me this week I began to feel I was in some sort of domestic prison, deprived of all free creative thought not associated with the private realm of family life. Its only today I am human again, after throwing a party for the Iranian New year, and realising that social connection with those who i have an emotional relationship with is what keeps me sane and draws me out of the mundane. This may also explain the unfolding nature of my artwork, the drive to create pieces that offer participation on a mass scale. It is obviously a need I have, both as an artist and a human being. It occurs to me today that, far from hiding the problems associated with being both artist and now mother of two, I need to recognise this tension and dilemma as an energy that informs and shapes what I do and attempt to work with it as positively as i can.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 The Third ChildTaking on what I wrote last time, I notice that the way I am (attempting) to continue my practice at the moment, almost 6 months into my second childs life, is very similar to the way I have experienced motherhood this time round – incubated, shockingly unpredictable, solitary, grasping at moments to breathe while waiting for the next-feed Time Bomb to explode, punctuated with flashes of light, mercurial inspiration, love and reflection…a feeling of chasing my own tail as concepts and plans for action get made, then sabotaged  by other demands, then remade, like the domestic chaos of our house as we slowly rework it after 8 weeks of building work. I feel that the way I am able to work this time round is very different to last time when I had Delia (now 3 ). Because of the traumatic nature of what happened just after she was born (my mother disappearing in the Asian Tsunami never to return), and the level of attention and support I received for a very long period of time, I was able to create The Loom installation and Mother to Mother with what seems like relative ease from a logistical point of view. There always seemed to be a loving pair of hands available to help whenever needed. This time round, as I attempt to nurture the seedlings of what was achieved in those two projects ( and with the money to do it from the Arts Council GFA ) and am now past the Baby Moon period, I am literally facing a very stark choice. I either give up developing my work in any depth and throw myself into full time motherhood, or find appropriate, regular childcare and domestic help to enable me to fulfil on my commitment to my Third child which is my arts practice. Actually even before I wrote that I knew that giving her up is not an option. This Third Child is very important to me and keeps me sane and able to function as a mother to the other two – it is something I am not willing to give up, but the balance to be struck between being present to my children and being present to this third child who is never guaranteed to be in when I need her energy and who I have to train to express herself on tap, is a fine one.  This Child is nevertheless a very faithful one ; she has always been with me and  she waits, sometimes for years with her bag of ideas, holding it out as I take each one and make it real. Those left in the bag awaiting immediate attention have labels on them like ‘The Gift’ ‘Cloth’ “Exile’, ‘Ritual’ . Right now my job is make sense of how these relate to what I am going to do, while making sense of who I now am as a mother and artist.    ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 "There is inherent in motherhood a continual giving up of self and few of us take to that without resentment, which in itself creates a river of guilt' ('Fruitful', Anne Roiphe, quoted by Kate Figes in 'Life After Birth', my current parenthood late night reading..). I have left very provoked recently by suggestions (from other women artists, strangely enough), that now I have two children, my practice has to be to some extent , completely given up for a while, or at least, only pursued in a superficial way, as a kind of sideline. The conversations around these were certainly worth my over-dramatic reaction as they force the question for me of why I make my work and how. I can see the value of recognising there is something to give up- a fixed idea of how I make my work and the scale and frequency of my contact with its audience. However, I remain convinced that the constraints motherhood puts apon my capacity to make work as and when I like, have and will enriched the work itself, and enable me to find a way to fit my work into a new and more fluid emotional, logistical and intellectual framework. I would not have made either The Loom or Mother to Mother without these constraints present.This path requires certain strategies which I am now creating  in order to make it work ; creating a studio within our house for me to escape to between feeds and needs, some daytime childcare support, designated headspace to think and feel my way into this phase of developing work (short walks up to the downs, morning pages, reading sessions in cafes after school drop-off and while Moses has his morning naps), and generally being much more organized on all levels. I am also thinking about setting up some sessions with other Mother –artists to explore and document current dilemmas on this subject, to try to explode the myth that a woman artist who seeks to work in a credible way cannot also mother adequately.Last week I went to the funeral of a friend who had died quite young, suddenly. There is always a searing pain that arises when a loss like this occurs, which plugs me straight into how much I miss my mother. However it also raises the question of The Gift which is given through an experience of loss – vacuums don’t remain vacuums for very long- and I think with this giving up of a part of oneself, whether through a bereavement or birth, will arrive an opportunity for being/doing/thinking in a completely new way. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 ‘My family was wrenched from all that was loved and familiar, yet there were no rituals to mourn our loss, no baptism for the painful rebirth. Instead, we were driven to bury the evidence of our personal catacylsm. Our differentness was a taint that we carried. The comsuming need to belong led us to purge ourselves of that which once made us who we were – our accents, our awkward clothes, our beliefs. We were faced with an unspoken choice; to be alienated from the world around or from our innermost selves’ “The Break’ from ‘Saffron sky’  by Gelareh Asayesh .(Featured in  “Let Me Tell You Where I ‘ve Been – New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora’ (Ed. Persis M Karim), which I have been dipping into recently). Although I was born in the UK, my mother (who died in 2004) transmitted her Iranian culture to us in such an ongoingly intense and passionate way that I have felt the absence of this to be like an aftershock of her actual death. She used to read/listen to Iranian news for up to four hours a day and call us with updates.(I loved it). She was the access to so much (admittedly biased) information which had a great influence on my work and life and still does. I don’t quite know how if I should try to reclaim this, or how to begin. Sometimes it feels as though part of me has moved country and is looking for a trap door back to that space where I heard and tasted and laughed and raged at her often extreme but always vibrant view of the world. To tie the connecting thread to her Iranian/ Azeri culture from me to my children. My arts practice is the trap door and this project will open it again.There isn’t a ritual for the initial experience of cultural displacement, but there could be. There may exist rituals that I do not know about. Often people who are forced to leave their homes leave only with the clothes on their back, mere threads carrying memories of a place that may be lost forever to their daily experience.  I think that somehow this next piece of work, this child of the loom project, will offer an experience of marking the shedding of one cultural skin and embracing of another. We have rituals for the loss of the body, so  why not one for the loss of a homeland and the transition into a new cultural landscape?. Am going to look into what exists. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 It's very easy, when going through a period of severe sleep deprivation (teething baby) to feel that everything else has frozen and nothing is going on on other levels. However, there has been some movement ..I have created a studio in the house (and it is almost usuable), I have explored some childcare options (all unsatisfactory so far but there is light on the horizon) and I have received a few invitations by email - out of the blue-  to consider developing ideas for commissions / events /show during the year. The nature of these invitations relates to the origin of the crafted object, my cultural hybridity and the development of a green space linked to my Mother to Mother project, and as such encourages me that things are slowly moving in the right direction and I am attracting opportunities which are relevant to the research I have taken on this year.  I quoted the Sufi saying 'Patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet' at my brother this week and I really need to take it on board myself. Re my last post on rituals for cultural transition, my brain was not in a fit state to pursue this thread and as such i waiting until I have had a few decent nights sleep this week before i resume it. Also, a long walk this weekend to clear my head and receive next steps ahead should help. One positive thing about sleep deprivation -  that altered state i only ever associated with torture camps - one's resistance to anything is weakened and ideas can creep in sideways, like burglars carrying golden nuggets. I have written a few things down in my notebook in the early hours, must read and see if they have any credibility... ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 I went up to Goldsmiths this week to discuss an installation proposal with Katy Bevan from the Crafts Council. It has all happened very quickly, a late request to put something forward galvanised me into pulling together some of the threads of thought around the next stage of the Loom project that have been gathering...I want to begin creating structures now out of text ribbons containing answers to questions within various public contexts. I realise this sounds vague and once I know about the outcome of this commission I am going to post my proposal on this blog...and deconstruct how it evolves into a final piece. Prof Janis Jefferies, my mentor on the project and Julie and Margaret from the Constance Howard Centre team were all there to support me in the meeting and I felt very strongly supported at what is an early stage of a potentially large project (the scale of audience is about 10 times anything else I have worked with). This is a new experience and it is such a strengthening element this year to be workng within a specific context such as this, it seems I am somehow more visible.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 Things seems to have accelerated over the last few weeks. I have been successful with my proposal for the Crafts Council commission for Origin and am meeting with them in a couple of weeks. I am going to deconstruct how this came about as I spent years wondering how people got commissions.. This opportunity has come from my R+D process, which begain with the symposium  at Goldsmiths in which I gave a paper on the Loom Project. Someone from the CC was there, my name was floated during a brainstorm, I was asked (together with other artists/maker) to propose an outline idea for a 2 week live, participatory piece to take place during Origin (formerly the London Crafts Fair), we met at the Constance Howard Centre and I got selected last week. The flow of these events was a a mixture of synchronicity and excellent support and context. it's an  The working title for the live textile installation is 'Crafting an Empty Space' and I found inspiration in Rumi in developing the idea from a textile to a woven structure : ‘CRAFTSMANSHIP AND EMPTINESS’ I’ve said before that every craftsmanSearches for what’s not thereTo practice his craft. A builder looks for the rotten holeWhere the roof caved in. A water carrierPicks the empty pot. A carpenterStops at the house with no door. Workers rush toward some hintOf emptiness, which they thenStart to fill. Their hope, though,Is for emptiness, so don’t thinkYou must avoid it. It containsWhat you need!Dear soul, if we were not friendsWith the vast nothing inside,Why would you always be casting your netInto it, and waiting so patiently? Jalaluddin Rumi, 13th century Sufi poet and visionary.  (Trans. Coleman Barks) I guess I need to check with the CC on whether I can publish my proposal..so will do that this week. It would be good to post it up , then see how it actually ends up.Am now on the case booking some of the team members fron the  loom installation, much emailing to do...The physical form of the work relates to my R+D work , though in a diferent context (experiences of cultural displacement and renewal) and with smaller numbers of people, so this is a very synchronous commission as it all interconnects, and starts just after my R+D on the loom project officially finishes. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 This feels like the right time is approaching to begin a separate blog for Crafting Space, as it's the offspring of my R+D and deserves a separate time and space for documentation, even though it is very interlinked to everything I am working on. The process of developing the proposal really helped me clarify  how i want to work up my original ideas for touring, participatory installation pieces over the next year. Over the last week, I have serendipitously been meeting makers who are working on or interested in the precise forms and structures and materials i need to experiment with for both this project and my others - hence i have bumped into two friends with yurts who have offered to show me how they are made, talked with 2 set designers with a specific interest in the genre of space I want to create, and  leartn that the friend we are going to visit in Spain in july, is studying sacred geometry, which is also at the centre of this piece. All in the flow.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 Now that the Crafts Council commission is under way and living in my other blog,( Origin Interactive; Crafting Space), I can think about the threads of my R+D which need some focus. Realistically, most of my child free time is taken with Origin, but my partner is main carer this summer, so I will have a good stretch/headspaceon both projects. One of the threads that came out of presenting at  the 'Touch, Textiles and Technology 'Goldsmiths symposium last year was meeting Monika Auch, a German textile artist who lives in Holland.She has worked a lot with strip woven textiles and looked with relish at the sample of text ribbons generated by the Loom Project installation. There are 1000 ribbons, with names, dates and messages for loved one living and dead, and I have kept them at home, waiting for the right moment and person to entrust them to for weaving.We have been talking by email, discussing the possible form our collaboration might take. She has worked with structural weaving too and so this idea - of which Crafting Space will be the first of a series of projects which use the idea of occupiable, public, woven space- to develop something together is an exciting one. I am going to send Monika a sample of the ribbons for her to work with, and she will come to see the Origin piece and from then we can plan our steps for developing a project together. Meanwhile, exchanges around birth, death and displacement run through our correspondence and it very much feels like we are being woven together……by work and life.I have postponed setting up and running workshops yet for my loom R+D as it feels like I need to learn something from the way the Origin piece behaves in and with the public, and to reflect and write more on the theme of the work. That is, the woven space as a metaphor for an empty space left behind by having to leave ones country (I will be working with those who are/ have experienced being asylum seekers/refugees) and using it to generate a portable, new space into which anything can be symbolically contained. Will develop this and articulate more specifically over next few weeks. I got an extension on my R+D so the stress around being able to deliver both projects has abated, ad I realise they are actually in perfect synchronicity with each other in terms of what I am learning and the contacts I am making..... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 I am in Spain, struggling in the august heat and my brain seems to have slowed right down (not a bad thing). I have been, slowly, reading 'Weaving the Word - The Metaphorics of Writing and Female Textual Production' (Kathryn Sullivan Kruger)[1] . I referred to it in my loom project in 2005, but I am revisiting it properly, as it seems the use of text and textile in my work is becoming so very crucial right now. The connections made between text and textile are giving me subtle new ways of placing what I do and how I do it.  A few glimpses here that have been pertinent; on meaning...  'By carrying the words and symbols integral to a culture's  social and religious beliefs, cloth conveys meaning...()..if one of the main functions of a textile is to bear meaning, then the traditional distinctions we make between text and textile begin to fade' On gender.. 'Because we habitually link female involvement to textile history, the recuperation of this history recovers a record of women’s participation in the creation of culture and its texts, thereby reclaiming a female authorship' A link with my sourcing of Persian poetry in my work - '..the word tiraz'  (sometimes 'taraz') 'forms a verb in Persian that means to weave , to adorn, or to compose poetry'. As a verb stem it also appears in compounds such as 'sukhan taraz' (word weaving, eloquent) that is used to describe poets. From such examples we can see how literary history and textile history were, at one time, interdependent' Thinking about Crafting Space and its form, I picked up on a reference Kruger makes to a book (which I must order.) by J. Hillis Miller called 'Ariadne's Thread:Story Lines' where 'Miller proposes that a text's architecture is really a labyrinth created from the thread of thought on which words are strung'. As I am in this new phase of working structurally with text and textile as a way of creating a collectively generated poetic text within a public domain, my heritage as an artist and (half) Iranian woman really starts to make sense. [1] Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press / London: Associated University Press. 2001... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 I have been preoccupied with the Crafting Space commission but there has been movement on other fronts that draws on both that and other experiences that i will write about this coming week, with the intention of bringing this blog to life again.. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 It is the eve of my son Moses' first birthday. I am in bed with a sprained back muscle, the only thing that has managed to slow me down after the post-show euphoria of working on the Crafting Space commission at Origin, which finished about ten days ago. There has been /still is so much to finish up and follow up from the experience – which I will detail as I  progress with this blog – but the main thing to say is that the title of this blog is far more appropriate than I first realised. The central themes of the questions asked of the public as part of their contribution to the installation at Somerset House were around the value and personal meaning of objects and the act of giving and receiving gifts. I feel like, being around this theme for a concentrated amount of time has affirmed the necessity of developing this question of the gift in other contexts and over a  longer time period. Time for sleep now, the imprint of my labour experience a year ago tonight sits inside me very clearly and how the birth and mothering experiences have affected my practice will also form a significant part of what I will be writing about here.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 There has been a lot to follow up on in the wake of my Origin /Crafting space project. There is now a photo gallery online and the Crafts Council are editing a short film about it, these will both help in raising its profile as I plan to get it put back into the public eye.   I started getting back into making in the studio last week , it’s helping me define my ideas for my current research and also for an application I am making for The Shape of Things bursary. It all interconnects and intersects and I will unravel my thoughts here next week.   I have finally begun to use the wrapped objects I begun 2 years ago to try out some ideas (see images). They are from my late mothers cutlery draw and I have been wrapping them in kilim wool from her village in Iran , then using edited extracts from the my Mother to Mother blog to create ribbon narratives linking the objects.   I used this blog to  document the Mother to Mother project but also transcribed my diaries detailing my  own experience of becoming a mother for the first time then losing my own in the Boxing Day Tsunami a few weeks later.   The images here are of the first piece, a kind of sketch to see how they could work. ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 Wow, that week between blogs  turned into a month. There is nothing like ill children and my own flu to slow down the train of life. I began to enjoy the headspace being unwell created and in the meantime a lot has been developing.   The other day I was in the Brighton Museum and came across some samples from the James Green textile collection, in particular ‘sazigyo’. -  Burmese textile texts. These were used to bind manuscripts and the texts woven into these beautiful tapes bore incantations and  declaration on the merit of the giver. It struck me that this is very connected to what I have been creating in my work – first with the loom project textile, then with Crafting Space and now with my smaller scale Gifts of the Departed series. I have also proposed using this as part of my Shape of Things  collective ‘wrapping/binding’ installation project  (I got shortlisted and am going to a selection panel/workshop in Januaryin Bristol, which I am excited about).   I have always planned that my R+D would involve working directly with groups of displaced people, co-creating an intimate and transformative ritual/ceremony-influenced artwork together that in itself was nomadic and would move around and grow as it passed from hand to hand. After completing the Origin/Crafting Space piece where I realized that (1) my work can be scaled up and still keep it’s intimacy and integrity and (2) creating an occupied space from materials and texts used is a powerful act and metaphor, especially in relation to a sense of place and belonging. So it is my intention now to begin a textile text, a piece of tape which will begin with me and my experiences and travel from hand to hand as I work with people. This text will eventually form the skin of an occupied space, an installation which will act as metaphor for an internal sense of home. Somewhere where the loss of homeland, culture and relationships connected to these can be articulated by individuals within a collective process and then woven together to create a point of contact with a present home, culture, relationship network, anew. Now that I have a clear point of departure, it is time to begin making contact with the people I have identified may want to take this journey with me. Saj Fareed is working with me on this, mapping how we can trace a path through the region as well as partner up with relevant organizations who can facilitate sessions etc. We will be running sessions together and seeing where we can take the project.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 Another month has passed, but what a month. It's full force head on the projects front! A brief resume of what is going on, after having been out of touch for so long..1. I am now working with Saj Fareed on setting up the first workshops for my R+D, which is going to eventually turn into a nomadic textile installation on a wide-reaching scale. I think i finally cracked what form it has to take, more on this soon.2. An installation at the Royal Festival Hall (Clore Ballroom) ..hooray, one of my favourite spaces in the country I am so blessed and very excited. I got called in just before Xmas - one of the producers, Becca, had been sent images of my Origin piece and other projects and she invited me to come and discuss ideas. She is one of the participation producers, with a speciality in visual arts and could see straightaway some resonances with their programming and asked me to come up with an idea to coincide with the 'Imagine' children's literature festival next month.I got an idea together which is based on a practice that is dear to my heart - bibliomancy (the art of divining with books) and it is  already in the fabrication stage. The fastest turnaround project I have ever done and also the biggest! But it has been coming together remarkably swiftly and I have had the gift of bringing Willow and a friend of hers, Terence Williams, to design and engineer a Heath Robinson type system behind the work. The project is called 'The Bibliomancer's Dream' and offers people the chance to intuitively select from one of 4000 books, then open up the book at random and write the line/verse found onto a section of giant scroll.  The structure is basically an enormous set of 12 bookcases set out in a half-circle shape. Most of them have writing desks attached, with a giant scroll flying across the desk that you write on and a spool/pulley system linked to a crank at the other end that you wind on yourself once you have written your piece. The scroll then gets moved up and around the top of the bookcase, displaying your text and eventually getting rolled back up onto another spool. The scrolls will get cut into lengths and hang from the columns in the space so you can read what others wrote. The feel of the piece is time-travelled, ancient Chinese with a hint of the mad inventor and deranged poet I guess.  It opens from feb 12th- March 3rd.  I need some sleep now but will write again this week..... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 They are starting the install of the The Bibliomancer's Dream today at the Clore Ballroom. I am not needed till tomorow, so have just been feeding creative choices and responses in by email and phone in this last week. I have really been enjoying the more hands-off approach and I feel very confident in the South Bank team’s ability to pull this incredible short-turnaround project into a public installation by Thursday when we open.  This is such a shift in my practice as up until now I have project managed almost all my own work. However it has been an intention of mine for this to change as I always ended up almost burning out, paying myself very little and not able to do any other projects properly. I realize I need the time, energy and guaranteed fee to do other things at the same time – professional and family-based.   I have really enjoyed the poem-based jobs I have had on this project, like choosing poems for display and also spending a day at the Saison Poetry Library making a wishlist from their collection for potential bookcase stocking. I realize I have drawn a lot more inspiration from poetry than visual arts  for my work and that bibliomancy (the art of divining with books) is like an old friend that I am finally getting to introduce to the a wider audience.   We needed a lot of books to stock the bookcases for the installation and Julia, the assistant producer has been working hard on this and they have sourced 6000, all donated. It feels right that the books have been gifted, there is a lot around gift and exchange with this piece, as with my previous ones, and I am looking forward to the whole thing being separated into units  at the end and gifted to schools and libraries. This feel right energetically.   There is a small thrill in being able to choose Rumi and Hafiz poems to be vinyl-printed onto the floor of the ballroom that thousands of people will stop and take in..   Meanwhile I went to Goldsmith’s last week to discuss my R+D project and came back with some interesting ideas  and contacts which I am looking into. Saj is on the case developing a network for us to begin working within and we are meeting at the studio  next week to discuss. I began a Creative Partnerships project the other week at Limes Farm school in Essex and will set up a separate blog for this as it runs till July and will be quite an involved process. I am looking forward to sharing my practice in a new environment as it has been a while since I worked with children, having them myself took up all my emotional energy…   ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 The last week has been taken up with the install and opening of The Bibliomancer's Dream at the South Bank Centre. I had an intense time sorting through the boxes of 6000 donated books, rather like Christmas with a few unwanted dodgy boxes of fiction but a lot of thrills with the volume of poetry and small treasures of wisdom. I got a sense of the vastness of human thought and expression that has been committed to paper… Everyone pulled it together with great focus and style….the lighting has created a magical, womb like atmosphere. Willow and Terence used their design genius to get the mechanism working perfectly and a few other touches too.... The opening drew a lot of the south bank staff including Jude Kelly who was extremely happy and excited by the work, it seems this is the kind of project they feel restores the space to its original purpose, so I was pleased to hear that kind of feedback! There have been events going on in the space as part of the Imagine Festival and it has been buzzing. The hazards of public art have become clear as children have been testing out the robustness of the crank and spool system and a few have broken with the pressure but they are getting fixed. I would expect there to be a snagging process as the visitor count in that space is something like 500-1000 a day. I feel very honoured to have been given the ballroom space to work with and it has felt very natural, like it’s what I was always supposed to have been doing. It’s given me a sense of confidence that I can now work in major spaces like this, hopefully internationally. I really hope too that this installation can tour somehow, it is such a resource and would be so easy to store and set up in different locations. I am inviting the universe to provide the opportunity!   It seems that people are really responding to the idea of bibliomancy as a momentary access to self knowledge and playful reflection and I enjoy the feeling of having passed on a small part of my heritage in this way. Quite a few people mentioned its something that they do in their own way anyway but didn’t realize it was a cultural tradition. I will be going up later this week with my family for some of the events – poetry and dance workshops, Gamelan day etc – and on Sunday we will be doing some stills and video documentation. Lastly, Six Pillars to Persia, an Iranian arts  online radio programme featured an interview with me on the project and my work today and it’s being repeated on Sunday 22nd 8/30pm. It’s on http://resonancefm.com (104.4fm)..click on 'Listen now'. I think It will also be archived at http://sixpillarstopersia.wordpress.com/ in case you miss it and are interested to listen.   ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 I cannot believe that the Bibliomancer's Dream is going to be over within a week. It has been a whirlwind, the constant events of the Imagine festival and the half term week saw it lovingly mobbed by children and adults alike. We just had not forseen how popular it would be and how quickly the scrolls would run out - we got through 5000 metres in a week (the amount we estimated for the whole month) and it has become impossible to keep up with demand. Of course I am not around on a daily basis to deal with it, it's the production team (and Willow an Terence were there a lot for the first week) but I think they are learning a lot about how it would be run second time around.  It's also the nature of the Clore Ballroom space, it seems to be a space the public feels ownership of and so the space and this installation are rather like someone's front room, a living organism that gets unmade and remade every day. However, even when the spools have run out though, the space is still full of people sitting around reading and bibliomancing -they write on bits of paper and leave them on the desks in the hope they will get written in, so its the intellectual act of engaging with the work that seems to continue despite the exhaustion of available scrolls which is an encouraging thought.Am running a book art workshop with willow this week for the entire Limes Farm school (who I am doing a Creative Partnerships project with until the summer). 75 children per session inside the installation! Luckily i was there during some of the live workshops at the festival and got a sense of what it takes to hold the space in that way. It's going to be kind of insane fun.... ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999   Willow and I spent Sunday afternoon at the Clore Ballroom saying our farewell to The Bibliomancer's Dream and doing an evaluation which was really useful and gives us ideas for next time.   Southbank are keeping the installation for the time being with the possibility of it being shown again and I think a lot could be done to ensure it runs to its optimum as it was so popular that its scrolls got depleted very quickly most days. However this did not seem to deter the public from using it for bibliomancy anyway, as well as a place to sit reflect, read and interact to on that level it was very successful. I would have liked the written texts of participants to be more visible within the space so subsequent people could have read and responded but we have ideas about how this could be designed in next time I realise, comparing the experience to Crafting Space and The Loom Project where we were a team of people in constant engagement with the work and there to facilitate the public at any given moment, that the 'live' aspect of my public installations need to be treated like a production process in themselves as they are so heavily participatory and the very physicality of the work requires regular tending to. This is a budget issue and something I will bear in mind when planning next time. Of course the audience volume and opening times were so much bigger and longer and it will be a case-by-case consideration.  I sat and did my last act of bibliomancy on sunday. I was thinking about my mother and how she would have loved the show and also about where she is now (physically, scattered in the ocean. Spiritually- everywhere, I feel) and I  pulled out a poetry book called The Twelve Lays of the Gipsy' by Kostis Palamas. The passage I fell apon was: 'In the depths of the ocean, Where the light does not penetrate, There live whales, which see, though the sun does not shine apon them. Their sun Is in their own bodies , phosphorescence which imparts to them The dim vision of an underwater dream'  **************** May this Dream rest in peace (for the time being..) Now I can focus once more on my own R+D which is starting to take real shape and revealing the shape of its gift to me slowly…     ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 So now back to Unwrapping the Gift of my own R+D. The Arts Council have been very patient, with the vital interruptions of my son's birth and two large commissions in the last 6 months. Finally the space and also practical support - through Saj Fareed who is working with me on the participatory side - to move on with putting my long-germinating ideas into practice.Where do i pick up? Maybe a quote from my Summary of Intention which is my rough  blueprint for the next 2 -3 years:  Structural form ' I intend to create a large scale woven structure,  woven and written into existence with the participation of thousands of people. The space will consist of woven textile texts on some kind of flexible frame. I envisage this being a very portable work somehow. The walls/ceilings will articulate that which can be expressed in words via the incremental inscription on a single spool of ribbon which is taken my myself I to interactions with groups and individuals who will write on it in response to questions posed on their experience of displacement.   The final work will be placed in a public space for a fixed period with a % of an existing weave done through workshopping/online input and the rest to be written/woven by the public during the installation period. The space would be comfortable enough for people to ‘occupy’ for long periods of time, in the way that nomads use tents when they settle'. The next part- my methodology- is to follow in the next entry.   ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999   So -following on from the last post,  here is what i wrote re my proposed methodology for my project; ' 1. Locate an organization/partner in the female mental health / BME sector to work with in providing access to relevant groups and individuals. Saj Fareed is working with me on this and we now have Eleanor Hope on board, BMECP Community Development Worker for the area. 2. Run text/textile workshops in the region/s using book weaves, writing/drawing and other methods. Try out a series of core questions to see which resonate with participants and feel relevant to the form of the work.3. Create a network of participating venues that then link into specific target groups to participate in the project. Plan the nomadic path of the weave itself and its development in one/series of large venues within the next 2-3 years. 4. Collaborate with an architectural/structural consultant to consider ways in which this final space could be created. I am considering  collaboration with an architect and software designer, as what I need to develop is really a large scale piece of soft architecture which will need its own budget and longer timeframe. I am very open to developing an intermediary stage experimental work that works more site –specifically with the textile-text wrapping of existing architecture in some way. 5. Take a ‘Mother Spool’ around with me to workshops and other situations and invite people to add to it. Use existing content from Mother to Mother site to begin the spool. Develop an online access point for adding text to the spool. Other spools could be sent out around the world and then be sewn to the mother spool once we are ready to weave the space.  The creation of these Child spools could be done not only online but by participating venues on the final trail independently. There would needto be an overall context to the participatory framework prior to final exhibition, i.e. through the venues, to guarantee a meaningful outcome and also to open up a publicised channel for the work as it develops, both online and in-venue'.I have had some vital conversations and thoughts since writing this which i will detail here soon.Time for rest now.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 Art and parenthood.. My experience of continuing my practice since becoming a parent has been opposite to that which I was socially conditioned to expect. I feel much more driven and  focused than before – now I know why we need our multi-tasking skills.. I feel more committed yet less attached to ‘success’ as having a child brings an enormous perspective to everything else I do. I have never had so much funding or opportunity to make my work come my way as since I first got pregnant. This may be simply my time-arc as an artist but it could be the new emotional energy children bring or the sleep-deprived lateral thinking that seems to manifest the ideas I need within this new expanded sense of who I am as an artist and mother in the world. I worked hard to give up feelings of guilt about being away when my son was so little (I started Crafting Space when he was 7 months old). To me it was very clear that the opportunity to make my work through this commission was connected to the birth of my son – that both he and my daughter have somehow brought me the drive to be play out my part in the world in a fuller way. The fact that my mother died suddenly just after Delia was born, is also connected to this – a strong sense of the finite nature of my life here and a deeper sense of my creative purpose. Drawing on my life experiences to make work (The Loom project, Mother to Mother) has meant that there has been a connection and mutual resource –sharing between the two sides of my life. Having said all this, I am in the fortunate position of having a partner who is also a creative and understands where I need to go with my work. He is a ‘natural born parent’ -  so when I have been away for several nights installing work it hasn’t been the huge issue it might be. The intense adrenalin state I get into when I am on a project deadline is not, I realize, always compatible with being around my children (Delia, 4 and Moses, 18 months) and my partner often prefers it when I stay away completely rather than come home and am still obsessing…. One thing I had as a child was the example of my mother as a working creative person. I think my daughter Delia seeing me as a fulfilled creative person helps her to grow up with a more comprehensive image of what a woman can be as well as respect the fact that I have a need for personal space which I must meet  in order to be a balanced human being.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999  I have been extremely busy with a whole range of things, all which interrelate like some delicate weave... I am happy to say that finally we will begin working with a group on the final workshop stage of my R+D. It is a journey we will take with the (very fittingly named) BME Womens Group called Woven. The timing is perfect and I feel I have a lot of tools to use during the sessions which will run until mid july.  I probably won't write much about the specifics of what happens, as it is a delicate line to draw re sharing and disclosing , but I will write about the kind of activities we do, using text, textile, poetry etc to transform our perception of what we feel is possible within ourselves in relation to our emotional and creative processes. It begins on June 15th in Brighton and I am feeling good about at last doing something in my local area..! In the meantime, the ‘weave’ is; working on The Shape of Things Commissionfor Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, a Creative Partnerships installation project at Limes Farm School in Essex, an article for Textile:The Journal of Cloth and Culture, and preparing my PHD proposal for Goldsmiths (more on that later as this new step has grown out of this R+D process). Also of course trying to make time for my small-scale studio practice and my children.. who are my greatest creative project to date.  ... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999 It’s been quiet on this blog, but there as been a lot going on in the world outside, so much that time has been short to catch up on it all. I have been busy with my new commission for The Shape of Things, which I am also blogging. However, in terms of this R+D, Saj and I have just reached the end of a series of workshops with Woven, a group of BME women we met through Eleanor, brought together through some history of depression and also a a love and use of textiles. So really the perfect match for us! It has been a real privilege to work with these women. They are a very powerful and vibrant group of humans beings and we both felt so at home with them. We used weave, (individual and communal), writing and a lot of discussion and sharing to open up dialogue around intercultural identity issues and the connection with well-being and emotional transformation.   Today was the last session for now (I a coming to the end of my GFA period)  but it was very clear on both sides that it feels just like a beginning and we do not want to part. We produced a gorgeous communal weave and the dialogue we wove covered so many areas, like a dance, personal narratives of great range and intensity, much laughter and some painful tenderness , a lot of insight and self-reflection , often referencing the intercultural self as a resource and a rich struggle.     There is so much to explore and I only got through half of the material I had planned as there was a lot to talk about out of the creative activities we did so. I am confident that we will find a way to continue, when there is such a strong connection the universe has a way of finding the means. If I do start a PHD this autumn this will be the perfect platform for developing further ideas around meaningful engagement using woven and emotional  structures and deepening what has been a striking and intimate conversation so far.  I am off on holiday now and will have a chance to reflect and evaluate what happened,(in preparation for my GFA final report) and to see how to take it forward. I will be meeting with Saj and Eleanor in August and plan to start something up again in late September. For now, my head and heart are in need of a re this has been the most intense  6 months of my working life, wonderful and often on the  verge of overwhelming. Motherhood has made it so, even though it is often the root of my drive and focus.... Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/413999