weaving concepts
Concepts are the bits of friction or eddies in the stream of making and remaking that constitutes our lives as artists, as community members, and as bodies in the world. Our interest in weaving concepts derives from our sense that concepts meaningfully give shape to the way we think and work. They also take shape and have material form in the tools we use to do these activities. This is a confusing chicken-and-egg conceptual circle: How is it that concepts beget new thought and yet are begotten by it?
The oscillations of the phrase “weaving concepts” keeps the conceptual confusion of product/productive in motion. Sometimes we think “weaving” as an adjective in this phrase and ask: What kind of concepts are weaving concepts?
(The diagrammatic form of the weave draft is a weaving concept that produces a certain kind of communication, but also immense possibilities for play and variation. Satin is a woven structure that produces . What about threads? Are threads concepts? Do different looms make for different concepts?
But, maybe this categorisation of concepts as belonging properly to the domain of weaving is kind of boring. Certainly, we are interested in the most flirtatious concepts. (But perhaps all concepts are flirtatious?) The ones that dress up in drag and that fuck with our minds. We’re into layers, selvages and drafts. Process concepts. Weave drafts are these layered things (start here? How to get here?). Slabs link with Myfs work.
What do weaving concepts do? Staggering between the act of reinventing pre-spun ideas inside of new structures
Do concepts function differently with different modifiers? We want to think concepts as tools. Making concepts is like making an art object — it doesn’t have to fully hold together. Concepts are created, they don’t get plonked in from somewhere else. This means, concepts are experiential, we have to find them–in our own ways and yet together. Concepts are affective — they create feelings but also they pulse through a space and experience in ways that exceed our current sensibilities. Concepts are bodily. They are intuitive. We are learning to DO a concept. Is that what “weaving concepts” names?
Sometimes when we see this title, we think “weaving” as a verb. Is weaving, then, a metaphor for what’s happening to the concepts? What would that be like? And what would that do for us? (I think it would be hairy. I think concepts are like wool and they would grab hold of each other and not let go! Losing their line-ness to some other way of being together. This brings us to felt.) We want to make some babies. But babies with more than just two hetero-human parents. What becomes a third species? Digging into a concept to make it a monster somehow. How can we make fibre mathematics an (im)proper 3rd species?
Finally–sometimes when we see this title, we think “weaving” as the concept at stake– like, maybe we need to talk about the various concepts of weaving. What concepts of weaving can we co-opt? How can we release ourselves from the sense that there are right and wrong concepts and instead use weaving concepts to grab hold of something new? Awareness of limitations and the logic of these limitations – implicit right and wrong –