TEXTILES: OPEN LETTER. Reading Textiles from the South: A Seminar on The Production of a Tactile Geography

The seminar approaches textiles from the epistemological perspective of the South aiming to address ways to examine, discuss, declassify and ponder the current aesthetic role of textiles within contemporary art and art history. The presentations pinpoint several disruptions textiles introduce within hierarchical and binary divisions such as the separation between art and crafts, the limits between the tactile and the optical, and the geopolitical boundaries between the North and the South. The seminar gathers the experiences of researchers, art historians, curators and artists committed to investigating the potentiality of textiles within contemporary art practice.

PROGRAM

11:00 – 11:30: Welcome and Introduction by Rike Frank and Leire Vergara

11:30 – 12:15: Patricia Molins, “That which has no name. Textiles as text”

12:30 – 13:15: Sabeth Buchmann, “Lightly Clad Histories”

13:15- 14:00: Workshop roundup

14:00 – 15:30: Lunch Break at Bulegoa z/b

15:30 – 16:30: Conversation between Teresa Lanceta and Laurence Rassel

16:30-17:15: T’ai Smith, “Why Textiles Matter (as Art or whatever) as Never Before”

17:30 – 18:00: Workshop roundup

The seminar can be seen in TV-tron. ( http://www.tea-tron.com/teatron/TVTRON.do )

Patricia Molins de la Fuente has a degree in Art History. Her work centres around the search for a space on the borders of art (dance, design, feminine art…) from which to consider it without the restrictions/exclusions of canonical art history’s assumed objectivity. Professor of History of Design for the Masters in Exhibition Management at the Universidad Europea, Madrid; Masters in Design, CEU, Valencia; and Masters in Museology, Facultad de Bellas Artes, Universidad de Valencia. She has curated exhibitions on graphic design (Mauricio Amster, Ricard Giralt Miracle, Enric Crous, IVAM, Valencia), on industrial design in its relationship to art (Arquitectura y arte de los años 50, Fundació La Caixa, Barcelona; Suiza constructiva, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS); Gerrit Rietveld, Museo Nacional de Artes decorativas, Madrid), and dance (Salomé, un mito contemporáneo, MNCARS; Flamenco, vanguardia y cultura popular 1864-1939, MNCARS. Her most recent text is “La heterogeneidad como estrategia de afirmación. La construcción de una mirada femenina antes y después de la Guerra Civil”(Desacuerdos, Madrid, 2012).

Sabeth Buchmann is an art historian and art critic. She is Professor for Modern and Postmodern Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Chair of the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies. She also is member of the Advisory board of the Berlin based magazine Texte zur Kunst. She regularly contributes to books, magazines and catalogues and is co-editor with Helmut Draxler, Clemens Krümmel and Susanne Leeb of Polypen – a publication series on art criticism and political theory. Recent publications include: with Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz (co-author): Hélio Oiticica, Neville D’Almeida and others: Block-Experiments in Cosmococa, London: 2013; co-ed. with Helmut Draxler and Stephan Geene Film, Avantgarde und Biopolitik, Vienna: 2009; Denken gegen das Denken. Produktion – Technologie – Subjektivität bei Sol LeWitt, Hélio Oiticica und Yvonne Rainer, Berlin: 2007; and co-ed. with Alexander Alberro, Art After Conceptual Art. Cambridge, Mass/ Cologne: 2006.

Teresa Lanceta is an artist, with a degree and PhD in Art History. Her work has developed around textile art and audiovisuals. She works on and investigates popular textiles in Morocco and Spanish carpetry in the 15th century. Teresa has exhibited individually at Museo Nacional Centro de arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), Madrid; Museu Tèxtil i d’Indumentaria, Barcelona; Museo de Arte Moderno, Ibiza; Université Le Mirail, Toulouse; la Nau, Valencia; Villa des Arts, Casablanca, and others; and collectively at Museo Gezhira, El Cairo; la Lonja del Pescado, Alicante; and Musée d’Angers. Her documentary on female workers at the Fábrica de Tabacos, Alicante, Cierre es la respuesta, was presented at the Centro Cultural Las Cigarreras. She writes for art publications such as Arteyparte, Horitzons magrébins and Debates sobre arte, and has given talks at the Universidad Complutense, MNCARS, Fundación March and La Casa Encendida, Madrid. She was awarded the XIV Premi Bernat Capó for her book Mujeres en la industria tabaquera de Alicante. She currently teaches at the Escola Massana, Barcelona.

Laurence Rassel directs the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona. She was a member of Constant, a non-profit association run from Brussels, from 1998 to 2008. Among other work done by Constant is research into feminist thinking and art practices, and critical analysis of intellectual property in new technologies. Between 2001 and 2006, Laurence coordinated projects for ADA, a network of Belgian educational centres for women which supports knowledge of knew technologies as a tool for integration.

T’ai Smith is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Her forthcoming book, entitled Writing on Weaving: a Bauhaus Craft, a Bauhaus Medium, looks at how Bauhaus weavers harnessed the language of other media – painting, architecture, photography – to articulate the specific dimensions of their craft. That book will be out from University of Minnesota Press in late 2014. Her articles and reviews have appeared in various periodicals, including Art Journal, Grey Room, Journal of Modern Craft, and  Texte zur Kunst. She is currently developing a new book project, provisionally titled Textile Media and Philosophy, which will examine the use of textile metaphors in media theory and philosophy since the 19th century. Next summer she will be a fellow at IKKM, at the Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, Germany.

Rike Frank is an independent curator based in Berlin. She has previously held positions as curator at the Secession, Vienna, head of the curatorial office at documenta 12, Kassel, member of the Programme Team for the European Kunsthalle, Cologne, guest curator at Ludlow 38, New York, and curator and researcher at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig Recently, she has edited the artist monographs Constanze Ruhm. Coming Attractions (2012), Sketches of Universal History Compiled from Several Authors by Sarah Pierce (2013) and the upcoming Timing – On the Temporal Dimension of Exhibiting.

This seminar belongs to the ongoing project: TEXTILES: OPEN LETTER ( http://www.textilesopenletter.info )

TEXTILES: OPEN LETTER is a project by Rike Frank (Berlin), Grant Watson (London), Sabeth Buchmann (Vienna), and Leire Vergara (Bilbao). In collaboration with Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; Bulegoa z/b, Bilbao and the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; and in cooperation with Allianz Kulturstiftung.