Material Memories in Storage: The Aftermath of Site-Specific, Collectively Made Textiles

Abstract

Site-specific, collectively made textiles are particularly effective producers of histories that entwine place and people. More than simply a means to an end, the process of making together foregrounds the potential of textiles to transform and be transformed beyond their materiality. The material making process mirrors another kind of making process: that of a certain kind of social integration or a sense of being and belonging somewhere, however temporary and changeable these may be. Once completed, however, these material artifacts can provoke difficult questions concerning the responsibility for their storage and display, succumbing to a fate in semi-permanent storage and eventually relinquishing their material presence to a form of visual or textual representation. Although this is not the fate of all collectively made textile works, given the widespread practice of collective textile-making, it is inevitably the fate of some. Using the example of a collectively made hooked rug project that I coordinated and participated in 15 years ago, I will explore in this article the transformed status of collectively made textile artifacts through memories of making in order to open up new understandings of these types of site-specific collective textile-making projects as a different kind of creative practice: as a narrative performance of experiences of being together.

Keywords:

• collectively made textile artifacts
• site-specific
• storage
• materiality
• memory
• narrative
• performance
• rhapsody

Acknowledgements

The original rug-making project, Déroulez le tapis rouge!, was a community-led initiative in the Belleville district of Paris from 2004 to 2006. The author is indebted to all the participants, the Comité Métallos, and the Régie du Quartier for making it possible.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emma Shercliff

Emma Shercliff is a textile maker, writer, researcher, and educator. She has been involved with creative, community-based textile-making activities as both workshop leader and participant for over 20 years. She is a senior lecturer in textiles at the Arts University Bournemouth, United Kingdom, specializing in stitched textiles. Her research interests encompass textile-making in social and educational contexts and the meanings of hand-making within post-industrial digital cultures. The particularities of these types of textile-making processes inspire an interest in metaphor within creative textile practices, in expressions of identity and place, and in the acquisition and transmission of embodied knowledge. She has published and exhibited work in France and the United Kingdom, but also has works in homes, community centers, and other people’s memories. [email protected]