Urban Fiber Flotsam

Tanvi Kant's Poetic Twist on Things

2008-09-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

I have been a big fan of Tanvi Kant's recycled textile accessories for quite some time. Each wearable piece has a vocabulary of its own and seems to demonstrate a free-spirited lesson in thrifty resourcefulness and poetic defiance. If I had had more time to prepare for Urban Fiber Flotsam, I might have spent my evenings in the studio twisting and knotting my flotsam into delicate cords and twine. I know that when I return to the farm near Siena there will be more than enough vine-like overgrowth to inspire my next series of fiber forays.

Flotsam as Metaphor

2008-09-22T08:55:00.000-07:00

I certainly do not profess to put my work on par with fiber artist Sheila Hicks, but I was amused when I came across these recent images of hers and their compatibility with my fiber flotsam experiments. Her 'Ringlets' (Paris, 1993) - constructed out of colored rubber bands and paper clips is a definite favorite of mine.

Chatelaine Fiber Chain

2008-09-17T10:55:00.001-07:00

My artist friend Brece Honeycutt kindly came out last Saturday to support and participate in my Lower East Side drifting with spun flotsam. She also clued me into the fact that my get up for the day looked somewhat reminiscent of a chatelaine or 19th century "housekeeper's belt".

A chatelaine or 'chain' is a decorative belt hook or clasp worn at the waist with a series of smaller chains suspended from it. Each chain is mounted with a useful household appendage such as scissors, thimble, watch, key, vinaigrette, household seal, etc. In the domestic sphere these implements obviously helped one to navigate the home and always feel 'equipped'. My urban mapping and exploration involved perhaps more impromptu tools - conversation being the principal means of interfacing and connecting. Nonetheless, I am now thinking hard about what my ideal chatelaine might consist of, particularly in this era of environmental sensitivity and heightened awareness.

Street Spinning/Mapping

2008-09-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

Remarkable synchronicities and somewhat magical moments occurred during Urban Fiber Flotsam. Jung often (loosely) described 'synchronicity' as being an 'acausal connecting principle'. Archetypes floated into view whether on random street corners, peering into pavement cracks, or as layers to be decoded on plastered alley walls. Drifting can indeed by a very centering experience. It is perhaps the most natural way to truly feel at one with your urban surroundings.

Fiber Flotsam Friends

2008-09-14T04:26:00.000-07:00

Stopover at Freeman's Tavern on Chrystie Street

Yesterday's outing on the Lower East Side was brilliant, and I have a lot of folks to thank for helping to make my 'drifting experiment' so anchored. I am in the process of archiving all of the photos and documentation, so please stay tuned for a more comprehensive overview of the tour.

For now, I would like to thank the following collaborators:

The CONFLUX 2008 team and curators
Jill Fehrenbacher and Inhabitat for their support
Meiling Chen for her photography and art direction
Jill Danyelle, creative ecologist and 'remake' inspiration
Brece Honeycutt for her input and spun fleece ideas
Moe Beitiks and Olivia Chen for their writing and editing
Eve Mosher for her encouragement and public works
Purl Soho and Habu Textiles
Ludmil, Jasper, Oliver, and Finn
Dad, a farmer and Mom, a handspinner

Eko-Lab Designer, Meiling Chen

Stopover at The New Museum on the Bowery

F.L.U.F.F Wrap Up

2008-09-13T06:25:00.001-07:00

I have been twining, knotting, and crocheting up a storm these past few days. Today I will be drifting the Bowery and small paved offshoots and byways - trying to catch an early autumn breeze and some flotsam in my hem. Wrapping things up at The New Museum Cafe by 4pm - if you want to share a tea. The museum guards might not let me in. If so, I will see you outside for a group photo.

* F.L.U.F.F. = 'Farmed Left-Overs of Urban Fiber Flotsam'

Your Trash is Too Beautiful

2008-09-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

So a dude on the street yesterday commented that the trash (flotsam) that I had gathered was essentially too darn beautiful. Granted I am prone to edited harvesting - selective picking, but this comment sort of made me feel dirty or shameful. Trash can be beautiful. Anything that drifts is, by nature, poetic. Which led me to wonder - is the classification of trash and the unanchored debris in our lives a feminist issue?

Dérive Decoded

2008-09-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

The Dérive ala Situationist speak is a spatial concept meaning an aimless walk, typically through city streets, that follows the whim of the moment. It is usually translated as a drift.

French writer and Situationist Guy Debord used this idea to try and convince readers to revisit the way they looked at urban spaces. Rather than being prisoners to their daily route and routine, navigating a complex city but treading the same path every day, he urged people to follow their emotions and to look at urban situations in a radical new way. This led to the notion that most of our cities were thoroughly unpleasant because they were designed in a way that either ignored their emotional impact on people, or indeed tried to control people through their very design. The basic premise of the idea is for people to explore their environment ("psychogeography") without preconceptions, to understand their true location, and therefore their overall existence.

We do re-weaving. We advocate re-weaving. We believe in re-weaving.

Street Spun Fiber (Day One)

2008-09-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

ingredients: deflated party balloon, packing tape, chinese food wrapper, dried grasses, found leaves & buds, garment threads, cotton gima, clothing scrap, mohair, angora, and clothing pin - in no specific order

It's All in a Day's Journey

2008-09-09T20:08:00.000-07:00

A guild is an association of craftspersons in a particular trade.

Like journey, the distance that could be travelled in a day, the title 'journeyman' derives from the French words for 'day' (jour and journée) from which came the middle English word journei.

Journeymen were generally paid by the day and were thus day laborers. After being employed by a master for several years, and after producing a qualifying piece of work, the apprentice was granted the rank of journeyman and was given documents (letters or certificates from his master and/or the guild itself) which certified him as a journeyman and entitled him to travel to other towns and countries to learn the art from other masters. These journeys could span large parts of Europe and were an unofficial way of communicating new methods and techniques.

Countdown to Conflux

2008-09-08T03:45:00.000-07:00

More 'street specimens' for Urban Fiber Flotsam will be archived and uploaded over the next day or so. By midweek I will begin preparing the twined/spun fiber for later in the week's crafting.

New photos can be viewed in my flickr/CONFLUX set. Please note: the vegetation that I have harvested/collected was not picked from live plants but found on urban streets, sidewalks, and in perches along my path. I would say that vegetation and trash are fairly equal in flotsam proportions - a discovery that I did not anticipate.

Street Specimens

2008-09-06T14:29:00.000-07:00

A new archive of urban fiber flotsam specimens is now viewable on flickr/abidoan.

Ragpickers and Historical Urban Fiber

2008-09-06T09:14:00.000-07:00

I recently came across this photo while doing research on the history of textiles in lower Manhattan, the Lower East Side specifically. It is a poignant photo of an Italian immigrant woman holding her carefully swaddled baby in her tenement flat on Jersey Street.

Photographed by Jacob Riis, creator of the photographic series, 'How The Other Half Lives' (1891), this image speaks volumes to textiles as a means of survival. Riis was one of the first photographers to use flash, and though viewed to be a muckraker and visual journalist, he was also later criticized for his deprecating views on women and certain ethnic groups.

Urban Fiber Inspiration

2008-09-02T19:03:00.000-07:00

17th century linen tassel

The Beauty of Complexity (Hilal Sami Hilal)

Sewing a possible cloud (Jim Hodges)

Vegetation near Laguardia Place

Flotsam Defined/Entwined

2008-08-30T17:07:00.000-07:00

flot·sam
pronunciation:
\ˈflät-səm\
etymology: Anglo-French floteson, from 'floter' to float, of Germanic origin; akin to Old English flotian to float, flota ship
date: circa 1607

1: floating wreckage of a ship or its cargo; broadly : floating debris

2 a: a floating population (as of emigrants or castaways) b: miscellaneous or unimportant material c: debris, remains

Origami Buckyball Tutorial

2008-08-26T07:23:00.000-07:00

In preparation for spinning 'urban fiber flotsam' from the streets of lower Manhattan, I thought that I should also polish up on some origami techniques for crafting a 'buckyball' (the artful arrangement of 60 carbon atoms). Better head over to the Whitney Museum this weekend to finally see the Buckminster Fuller exhibition. 'Starting with The Universe'seems like a good place to start.

Site Under Construction

2008-08-22T09:54:00.001-07:00

The Urban Fiber Flotsam project blog is currently under construction. For more information, please visit my Conflux 2008 project page. The dates for Conflux 2008 are September 11 - 14. More event details and project preparation images to come.

(*The Center for Architecture is this year's host for Conflux 2008.)