Small circles from a wool blanket dissolves back into nature
It all begins with the material at hand. An old blanket in a freezing cold house at the end of the road. The blanket was on a bed, it looked loved and worn, thinner where a body had rubbed against it over and over again. Three generations ago the villagers in my current hometown would send the wool from their sheep to a small weaving factory. In return they would get wowen wool blankets. These blankets can be found in many a Norwegian home, handed down from a grandmother or another old relative. They come in different colors depending on teh different factories that created them, and often with floral patterns. The apparance reveal the zeitgeists of a time that was. in the blanket i found in the old house, the colors and pattern shines through almost as a mother of pearl effect in this piece of art created from the wool material. As a material it is soft, shape-able but can also stand up, firm but bendable. I played with small circles, and let the material qualities help me create strange abstract rhytms and surfaces. When I worked like this, letting the material and my sensory curiosity guide me, I realize that impressions from my everyday life can sneak in. I see a lot of my local nature in this, but from forest and sea that i walk past, every single day.
My aimless sensory curiosity found an expression that can understood through Elisabeth Grosz's thoughts on territory (Grosz, 2019), described as divisions and demarcations from nature and the forces of the earth; the chaos. Art can bring qualities out of frames and make them perceptible. It sends territories back to the chaos they have been demarcated from for a while. As an example of territories and frames, Grosz points to the house and claims that what architects do is create frames, like walls and rooms, which are in turn filled with furniture and fabrics. She describes this as demarcating the chaos and giving it a place, a space and a time where bodies can live and dwell. She calls the home our most rooted territory. In this I glimpse the origin of my wonder in the quiet and cold house of the deceased old man in my neighbourhood, his demarcations from the chaos, materials he has been in direct contact with. I open the frames and put them back together in a search for the atmosphere I encountered in his house, and in collecting materials with wear and tear marks from his life.
Sources:
Grosz, E. (med Dunker, A.). (2019). Kaos, territorium, kunst: Deleuze og jordens innramming. H//O//F. https://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-nb_digibok_2021112348612