skin:textile:film

Abstract

In handing down and perpetuating a dysfunctional relationship between artist, materials, and tools, gendered and occidental canons of art practice have caused art-viewing and art-making to become separated activities. For many artists this cuts directly across the grain of their work, nowhere more so than within textile practice. In unpicking, locating, and mapping (inter)relationships between the haptic and scopic, this article proposes a model for understanding and positioning textile practice within broader artistic discourse. In creating a triptychal landscape for such (inter)relations—skin:textile:film—and endowing the textile with the role of filter between skin and film, the muffled areas that lie between the purely haptic and the purely scopic can be identified and examined. Alongside this, (linings) (Ann Hamilton 1990) will be explored to highlight and test some of the subtleties present in this proposed framework. This article focuses on a practice-based engagement with materiality in art-making, most specifically that of the artist working with textiles, in order to suggest a more nuanced understanding of the role of the artist culturally and critically. Finally, this article will consider the potential of the textile itself as a model for understanding haptic-scopic (inter)relationships which allows for a more subtle feeling of the way around practice.

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