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resilients:debrouillardise_et_coquetterie [2012-05-04 13:28] – old revision restored coralie | resilients:debrouillardise_et_coquetterie [2012-06-03 19:07] – 109.129.58.244 | ||
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- | ==== Debrouillardise | + | ==== Débrouillardise |
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Coralie Stalberg, April - May 2012 | Coralie Stalberg, April - May 2012 | ||
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- | * something on wikipedia | + | **PRESENTATION** |
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+ | **“Débrouillardise et Coquetterie”** is a project on DIY textile practices and associated recycling strategies during a historical period characterized by a radical scarcity of material resources — the Second World War and the years right after the war. In the context of research for a resilient future that would be more sensitive and committed to sustainability, | ||
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+ | D&C consists in an ongoing registration and documentation process of the WWII textile DIY practices and the narratives around them, mainly through fieldwork in Senior meeting places and elderly houses. The collected material will be hosted in a living archive. | ||
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+ | I am further interested to generate contexts for creative re-enactments and playful re-interpretation of those resilient practices in our contemporary context, through workshops bringing together elderly and kids/ | ||
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+ | ** | ||
+ | METHODOLOGY / THEORETICAL PART : at the crossroad of History, Ethnography and Textile Conservation.** | ||
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+ | - **History**, | ||
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+ | http:// | ||
+ | http:// | ||
+ | http:// | ||
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+ | An inspiring text from Dominique Veillon : http:// | ||
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+ | « Longtemps, les documents écrits ont seuls eu droit au statut d' | ||
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+ | **-Anthropology**: | ||
+ | ** | ||
+ | °Experimental Ethnography** : | ||
+ | http://www.osea-cite.org/history/exp_ethnography.php | ||
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+ | - Experimental Ethnography locates the value of the anthropological intervention, | ||
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+ | -Fieldwork practices are being “recombined” to explore their utility in the recirculation of given knowledge in a relevant manner by the very activity of the exploratory bricolage. | ||
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+ | -Bricolage of fieldwork in which concepts, methods, techniques from various fields of art (scenography, | ||
+ | ** | ||
+ | °Anthropology of Transmission | ||
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+ | Transmission is a topic of crucial importance for anthropologists. However few are the studies which make transmission their focal point, a subject for and in itself. In this paper I show how cases of transmission haunt the very foundations of our discipline and how they lie at the back of such notions as memory, re-invention and continuity. I conclude by asking how we can study ethnographically the fleeting reality that is the act of transmission. David Berliner – Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains. | ||
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+ | http:// | ||
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+ | ** | ||
+ | ° Anthropology of cloth / Costume History | ||
+ | ** | ||
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+ | « Pour une anthropologie du vêtement » Yves Delaporte, CNRS/Musée de l’Homme | ||
+ | http:// | ||
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+ | «Le vêtement est l' | ||
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+ | http:// | ||
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+ | °My own ‘bricolage’ : **In search of an incarnated practice of anthropology : a Poetical Ethnography inspired by the gestures, tools and strategies of Textile Conservation, | ||
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+ | Out of my desire to collect stories from the past as precious fabrics…. | ||
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+ | The most important thing that my journey through textile conservation brought me is a deepening of the understanding of the ethical dimension of my practice, throughout the whole process of the fieldwork (from the encounter to the collecting of the story - of the constitution of a living archive of stories - to the transmission of the past story and their transformation by younger generations) | ||
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+ | METHODOLOGY / EXPERIENTIAL PART : (in construction) | ||
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+ | - Phenomenology of the encounter (cf fieldwork) | ||
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+ | - Assessment of the relational complexity induced by the dynamics of the gift/ | ||
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+ | - Design spaces/ | ||
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+ | For ‘Débrouillardise et Coquetterie’ I want to hybridize my ‘ethnographical – encounter’ practice with tools from textile conservation. | ||
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+ | At the core of my ethnographical practice lies LISTENING to the other, as a receiving and a taking care of its story. Hosting the story in my dilated present. | ||
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+ | Somewhere in between ethics and Sensoriality/ | ||
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+ | Textile is for me intimately related to touching, I like touching with closed eyes. Feeling softness, rugosity, holes, threads. | ||
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+ | As listening with the closed eyes is every time again a beautiful and deep sensorial experience. | ||
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+ | Receiving the voices of my interviewees as a precious gift, enjoying soft, slow, fast, textured voices. | ||
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+ | Textile pieces and threads came up as ‘CONCRETE’ METAPHORS for the sensations i like to focus on when I interview and listen. | ||
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+ | Deepening the experience of touching a textile, learning the words, concepts and parameters used to analyze a piece of cloth would allows to receive more complex insights in the textures of voices given to me during the process, by analogy-thinking. | ||
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+ | Textile conservation came up as the most complete approach to analyze textile in depth, its fascinating multidisciplinarity : in between chemistry , biology, art history, craft…A lifelong learning process… | ||
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+ | If the operating concepts of textile conservation seduced me to apply them on the sensorial level of the voices of my interviewees, | ||
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+ | Textile conservation also attrackts me as a discipline: | ||
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+ | Because it is a lived, bodily practice to focus on minutiae – as this focus is also central to my practice of ethnography. | ||
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+ | The infinite pleasure I have of focussing on « little » things, I am curious to apply them through textile conservation exercices. | ||
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+ | « Little » things are disscrete and apparently insignificant thruths, that I search for in my ethnographical explorations. ; | ||
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+ | Values of the conservator that I admire: | ||
+ | -Sticking to the concrete | ||
+ | -Taking utmost care of the piece you are in charge of | ||
+ | -Humility in the presence of the object | ||
+ | -Respect of the integrity of the object | ||
+ | -Develop a deep affinity with the object | ||
+ | -Commitment to extremely slow processes | ||
+ | -Accept that after the short moment of excitement you will commit to a long time of routine tasks, you will be bored. | ||
+ | -Minutiae /Precision of craftmanship. | ||
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+ | The textile conservator is constantly involved in finding out all kind of strategies : conservation is about inventing ways of handling difficult objects. Your ability to handle difficult situation in everyday life will help you a lot, they say in the guide for textile conservation! | ||
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+ | I became more and more curious to apply metaphorically the tools for conserving pieces of cloth on micro-narratives from the past. | ||
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+ | FINDINGS: | ||
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+ | The Nature of the piece of textile is of fundamental influence on what can be at best done to preserve it. This rules inspires me ver much… but which words to define the nature of a story ? | ||
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+ | Tex Conservation nations that are ‘operative’ | ||
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+ | Texture of the piece of cloth : its fabric and structure. | ||
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+ | Characteristics : | ||
+ | Loose patterns Zig Zag Patterns | ||
+ | Unevenness in tension | ||
+ | Missing parts | ||
+ | Schilferend | ||
+ | Scheuren | ||
+ | Extreme cases of total fragmentation | ||
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+ | Qualities: | ||
+ | Extensibility | ||
+ | Elastic limit | ||
+ | Flexibility | ||
+ | Density | ||
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+ | Folds | ||
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+ | Size – weight – complexity | ||
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+ | Fragile zones | ||
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+ | How much repair needed ? | ||
+ | How much alteration has bien carried out ? | ||
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+ | The irreductible individuality of the story. | ||
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+ | Actions / Performatives: | ||
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+ | -cleaning | ||
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+ | -sewing (steunweefsel naaien) : the stories I collect from elderly spontenously receives ‘steunweefsels’ from helping people surrounding, | ||
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+ | -To raise the piece of cloth/ to raise the story | ||
+ | -To cover the piece of cloth/ To cover the story | ||
+ | -Framing, positioning the piece of cloth/ the story | ||
+ | -Unroll the cloth/ the story | ||
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+ | Pinning : involves making holes, or having marks that tends to remain | ||
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+ | Transfer to other contexts : the fragile condition of the story that is being displaced | ||
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+ | Unprotected condition of the released object/ | ||
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+ | What does this displacement of concept from the conrete realm of the cloth pieces to the immaterial realm of the words and narratives mean to me, and what does they mean to you ? | ||
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+ | IN TEX CONSERVATIONS AND IN MY ETHNOGRAHICAL ENDEAVOURS, WE BOTH WORK WITH OBJECTS/ | ||
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+ | At risk of dissapearing. | ||
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+ | Decaying is part of their very essence. | ||
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+ | The responsability of our disciplines is to slow down these built in process of decay. | ||
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+ | Some Notes on my apprenticeship in Textile Conservation: | ||
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+ | Hands on ! | ||
+ | course followed at the Kunstakademie of Anderlecht, sectie ambachtskunsten. | ||
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+ | http://www.academieanderlecht.be/index.php? | ||
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+ | teacher : http:// | ||
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+ | Joke has an impressive knowledge in chemistry, crafts, art history and insects. She tries with a lot of patience to transmit me the basic skills of a textile conservator. The skills needed in this course are very challenging and difficult to me : patience, concentration, | ||
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+ | Something Joke says that I like very much : « Behandel elk stuk alsof het het meest waardevolle ter wereld is. » | ||
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+ | I still can’t separate the Gutterman thread into its 3 consitutive threads. It’s a kind of choregraphy with the fingers you have to master, I just can’ grasp it. We have to do this because when restauring a piece we have to use the finest thread possible, so that the intervention is as invisible as possible. | ||
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+ | I like the cleaning ritual of textile conservation : | ||
+ | Conservators have to obsessionally clean their hands before manipulating the cloth pieces, but also regularly during the process. First year students have the tendency to forget this, so part of the teaching process of Joke is to repeat it all over again… | ||
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+ | In the beginning of the apprenticeship we learn : | ||
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+ | -the core (ethical) values of conservation through the little gestures of the practice, ‘richtlijnen bij het manipuleren’ | ||
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+ | - how to make a ‘behandelingsrapport’ : identification form of the textile piece, description (from technique to art history background) // condition report every action that is executed on the piece of textile has to be thoroughly documented (through pictures, calques, draing, samples, formulas…) cf. ‘dagboek der werkzaamheden’ | ||
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+ | - to make a support fabric and a protection fabric, to learn the most important sewing techniques in this regard | ||
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+ | Bibliography : | ||
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+ | « Textile Conservation: | ||
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+ | « Textile conservation and research: a documentation of the textile department on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Abegg Foundation », by Flury-Lemberg, | ||
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+ | « The textile conservator' | ||
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