.   .   .

“Embroidery is still seen as an emotional gesture… expressed yet safely concealed in the stabbing satin stitches”

Rosika Parker[1]

There is something incredibly intuitive in the embroidery process. As soon as the needle takes its place between finger and thumb, the metal and thread become an extension of the body. The body gently rocks as the thread winds around the hand, and the strands slip through the eye of the needle. The fingers guide small spaces for the stitches as the needle punctures through. The body feels the puncture, the pull, the tension, and moves with it, through it. The moment the thread slides through the hand, the body takes over, and the rhythm settles into the muscles. The body remembers. The soothing repetition of manual work bypasses cognitive functions. All that remains is sensation - intuition embodied.

.   .   .

At first glance, embroidery might seem an unlikely medium for a socially engaged art project. The often solitary nature and the quiet domesticity traditionally associated with the craft seem at odds with the community-based activist nature of social practice. There is, however, common ground between the two. Both engage art in a practical and meaningful way by relating it to the real world, rather than relying solely on conceptual frameworks.[2] [3] Both exist as processes and encounters in the houses and lives of the community, rather than aesthetically pleasing works that exist in the gallery. Even though they do have outcomes that can sit in gallery spaces, there is more substance to their forms. Both play a role in society that ‘fine art’ cannot, and thus are able to make art more accessible and engaging for a wider variety of people.  Due to their ability to take up space within their communities, embroidery and socially engaged art are in a unique position to reflect and affect society.

The shift away from representational objects has expanded the definition of art. Art can now be viewed as an agent of change,[4] an affective force that engages people,[5] and creates powerful ripples in the wider social body.[6] Art has been taken beyond the studio and gallery spaces, and integrated into the everyday, to the extent where “real-world social activities… dovetail with forms of social practice”.[7] Given the current political climate, which is characterised by widespread social unrest, and the current viral pandemic, Corona Virus Disease (COVID 19), which has effectively isolated people in their homes and countries, there is a need for connection now more than ever before. Social practice has the potential to fill a void, and effect change in the areas of politics, social inequality and isolation.

Traditionally, contemporary art has focused on the creation of an aesthetic object, one that was then displayed in gallery settings, or other institutional spaces.[8] The process revolved around the idea of highly refined aesthetic appreciation. Over time, that focus has expanded to include public and politically motivated works, such as Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Wrapped Coast (1968-69), which often occurred outside a traditional space. Today, the focus has broadened to such an extent that even ordinary, everyday actions, such as talking, eating or walking, can be considered art in their own right.

Socially engaged practice, as it has come to be defined, had its roots in the 1960s and 1970s, but socially engaged art began to emerge as a field in more recent contemporary art contexts, from the 1990s onwards, as a rejection of the elitist notion of fine art.[9] Socially engaged practice is defined by the work’s ability to engage with the wider social body, either through direct participatory action or by creating open dialogue around social issues. Practitioners often develop strong connections to local communities, using art to stimulate discussion and effect real world change. Theaster Gates’ The Dorchester Project (2009-) utilises community-driven initiatives through creative practice in order to revitalise and reclaim local neighbourhoods. Gates acquires local real estate and converts the properties into spaces for community-based arts and cultural development programs.[10] This is a prime example of social practice, as it exemplifies how art can have a real and lasting impact on society.

In order for an artist to effect change, there is no necessity for a grand gesture, as in Gates’ purchasing of real estate. Even small artistic gestures have the potential to cause an affective ripple in the social body. There is something intriguing about Darren O’Donnell’s idea of “social acupuncture”[11], where small gestures at key locations create a release of tension that causes a larger affect within the “social body”.[12] Social practice holds space where the occurrences of intimate moments and familiar gestures have the ability to occupy an area within the world of contemporary art. Clare McCracken’s My Place, Your Place, Our Place (2014) allowed residents of the City of Greater Dandenong to reclaim public space by providing hand-crafted cushions in order to make public seating more comfortable over an extended period of time.[13] This project demonstrates the power that can be contained in small, socially engaged gestures. McCracken was able to shift the dynamic of the space from a place that was designed to be occupied for a short period of time, to a place that could be enjoyed by the public for as long as they wanted. Though the cushions are hand-crafted, it is not the design of the cushions that contains the artistic value, but rather it is the considerate, community-based gesture that holds the real value.

Lisa Hilli’s Just Like Home (2008; 2010; 2013) project elevates the simple art of cooking a meal with a loved one to an opportunity for reflection and cultural learning.[14] Lee Mingwei’s The Mending Project (2009-) takes the idea of mending articles of clothing, and creates a space for unspoken histories and emotional connection.[15] This type of practice allows a deeper engagement with community. The practice becomes an act of active listening, where every moment is important, no matter how trivial it may seem. The smallest of gestures, the briefest of moments can lead to the most affective and deeply felt experience. Whereas O’Donnell compares the social body to a physical body,[16] I like to compare it to a body of water. Each one of us has the ability to cause ripples that shift outwards and reach others. I see social practice as a cause and effect relationship. Each encounter creates ripples that are amplified as they travel through the participants and roll out into the wider community.

Relational aesthetics,[17] although no longer a favoured term, encapsulates the above sentiment perfectly. Social practice is a practice of relations, seen through aesthetics. It is about nurturing relationships with care and consideration. Hidden within social practice, like the currents that flow under the water, are ethics. When dealing with communities and individuals within the context of an arts practice, you must maintain a level of attention to and awareness of the emotional weight the practice holds.[18] The approach to ethics is not as clear-cut in social practice as it is in other industries. [19] [20] To some extent, the ethics of using people as participants in projects has been overlooked, or at the very least, underplayed. Exploitation of participants has occurred under the banner of  ‘the end justifies the means’.[21] Santiago Sierra, for his 160cm Line Tattooed Across Four People (2000), hired four heroin-addicted prostitutes for the price of a shot of heroin in order to realise his project of tattooing a line across their backs. The intended purpose was to highlight exploitation that already existed, however, the consequence was perpetuating the systems of inequality.[22] Great care must be given to participants, both during and after any project. Without engagement, social practice falls flat, however if we want to engage with others through social practice, we must be thoughtful and ethical when dealing with participants, indirectly or directly, and be aware and respectful of boundaries and potential impacts.

The intersection between social practice and ethical practice is an area that became a major focus of my project. Having been surprised by the institutional championing of artists like Sierra, who I believed were perpetuating inequality and social injustice for their own professional benefit, I was motivated to develop a strong ethical practice. I started the project with a relatively naïve idea that in order to be ethical, all I had to do was have good intentions, and avoid exploiting or harming people. I underestimated the effect that even a small gesture like a personal conversation, could have. By working through the ethics application process, I realised the emotional weight that even seemingly inoffensive acts can have on participants, and as a result, the framework for my project shifted a number of times before it received ethical approval.  While laborious and at times frustrating, this process fostered in me a new understanding of how much art can impact, and the responsibility artists have to take when involving participants in their projects.

My project Embodying Veiled Utterances (2020), explores intimate encounters and existing relationships by translating conversation through intuitive process. The project was run over several weeks, and consisted of three one-on-one telephone conversations between myself and each of five individuals, with whom I had existing relationships. Some participants I considered myself very close to, and others I wanted to re-connect with during the period of isolation and lockdown, associated with COVID-19. Each phone call lasted a minimum time of two hours. The sentiment of each conversation was transcribed through the medium of abstract embroidery.  I used cues from participants to inform the patterns, shapes and colours of the work. The project aimed to capture the hidden and unspoken elements of conversation, rather than creating a literal translation. In this way, the project investigated how the process-driven craft of embroidery and participant-driven dialogue could work together to create an affective and meaningful connection between two people.

Given the heightened emphasis on staying connected during the pandemic, I wanted to see if there was a way that I could more fully engage with the intersection of art and life that lies at the core of social practice. It became not so much how did my project fit around COVID-19, but rather, how did it sit within it? The project became one of my key connections to the outside world during the period of lockdown in Melbourne. I used it as a way of maintaining connection with people, some of whom I would normally see on a regular basis, and others with whom I had lost contact over the years. By choosing to focus on personal conversations with familiar people, I was able to dip my toe into the waters of social practice, creating ripples and navigating the current of ethics, but in a way that was less overwhelming for a novice socially engaged artist.

The project is a consideration of more than just aesthetics; it is an experience and process that then, in its aftermath, is viewed by others. Coming from a sculptural background, I wanted the project to be focused on the process. The real project lies in the processes of development, ethics approval, making, talking, feeling, and reflecting.  Any final product would be merely a glimpse into the world of the project, a reverberation of what has already occurred. The accumulation of processes in the project incorporates the elements of social practice, small gestures, the melding of art and life, and the ideas of process versus product, and hidden versus seen. Embodying Veiled Utterances aims to sit within the waters of social practice, both responding to and creating affect.

DIALOGUE AS AGENT

One of the most common forms of everyday activities is conversation, making dialogue an ideal framework for social practice. People exchange ideas, thoughts, and feelings through conversation, creating, reforming, or even severing, connections. While conversations can often be meandering or mundane, there is aesthetic value hidden both within and underneath the words.[23] Unspoken gestures and feelings permeate the surrounding air during discourse. Philosopher J.L Austin explains that the “issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action”.[24] Conversation has the ability to not just describe, but also, create the world around it.[25] This is where the artistic elements of conversation lie. It is the thoughts discourse can evoke, and the potential action dialogue can stimulate, that is of most interest, in terms of social practice.

Dialogue is described as an exchange of topics of which no participant is aware of in advance.[26] It is “how the flow and structure of the conversation will connect these topics”[27] that gives discourse its form. According to Pablo Helguera, conversation can be categorised under two sets of opposing characteristics: undirected subject and directed subject; and open format and closed format.[28] Everyday conversations and casual interviews sit within the category of undirected subject and open format, characterised by a less structured format, organic flow, and shared ownership. These characteristics are valuable in a collaborative work. Carolyn Eskdale’s Dialogue Pressings (2018) embraces the collaborative and unpredictable nature of conversation by having participants sit across the table from each other, pressing plasticine into a table with their hands while conversing.[29] Eskdale acknowledges the shared authorship and aesthetic form of conversations, and embodies these through the physical action of pressing.

The appeal of dialogue as a framework for my project was threefold. First, dialogue gives participants ownership of their contribution to the project. Second, dialogue includes the unseen and unsaid, which can be felt, and therefore translated. Third, dialogue is familiar to participants, allowing them to express their feelings and ideas, and fostering a genuine and authentic connection between the participants and the project. The act of collaborating through conversation allows for a more authentic relationship between artist and participants.[30] Participants are met with respect, and their input is both essential and valued. Dialogue creates a space where participants are free to express as much or as little as they choose. This freedom can potentially lead to outcomes and engagement that the artist was not expecting, and it is this element that makes dialogical frameworks meld into the umbrella of socially engaged art.  The project becomes dynamic, as the artist is forced to relinquish some control.

VISCERAL AFFECT

Language and utterances have the potential to create affective encounters and responses. Affects are autonomic, unconscious experiences of intensity, which overcome the divide between mind and body.[31] [32] Affect theory refers to a philosophical term that emerged in the 1990s during the ‘affective turn’[33] and stems from Spinoza’s philosophical idea of ethics, that the whole of the universe is made of one substance,[34] as well as Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of affect as non-conscious experience of bodily forces.[35] Affect theory is often thought of as a pre-cognitive, visceral, bodily response that “arises in the midst of in-between-ness”.[36] The concept centres the body as the first receptor of information and the gateway to experience. In Parables for the Virtual, Massumi outlines affect theory and defines it as an initial, visceral reaction to a stimulus.[37] Massumi states that “emotion… is intensity owned and recognised”.[38] It is not possible to experience emotion without first having experienced affect.

As affect deals with sensation and visceral feeling, when looking to bring the theory into an artistic context, it becomes an extension of how we move through the world and how the world moves us to create.[39] Affect in relation to art is about “what sticks, or what sustains or preserves the connection between ideas, values and objects”.[40] The relationship between art and affect looks at how works expand into being more than mere objects or representations, and move into sensation, becoming a trace of “the affective relations”[41] experienced by those who engage with the work. Dennis Del Favero’s work on abuse, Parting Embrace (1997), stimulates an affective response in the audience as a result of the provocative images that combine aesthetic beauty with violent trauma. The audience feels the shock of the images initially in the body, and later in the mind.[42] Jill Bennett adapts Massumi’s idea of affect as intensities for the art world, arguing that the aesthetic process only strengthens these intensities.[43]

The affective “movement of thought”[44] has become a gateway in which affect has expanded into the art world. The body is as intellectually valid as the mind when looking at the artistic process. Elspeth Probyn states “emotions and affects are ideas…not solely of the mind”.[45] As such, affect is an initial, gut feeling that does not need words; it needs to be experienced. It is not common or comfortable, however, for us to sit with the initial reactions and feelings experienced by our bodies. We are more inclined to let the mind take over and reason why these feelings are experienced.[46] The idea of being comfortable sitting with the visceral sensation and experiencing the space of unknown and mystery is appealing to me as an artist. When you read about a sensation, you do not really understand it. When you experience a sensation, you understand it completely, but it is a fleeting feeling, which only truly exists in the body. These sensations are traces of “bodily memory”[47] that, through experience, are transformed from “formless into concrete embodied information”.[48] Everyone understands the sensation of having a shiver up your spine, but it is difficult to put this sensation into words without it losing something in the translation. Sensory gating is how the brain deals with the sensations experienced. Affective practice has the ability to create small glitches where sensory gating does not occur. You feel it all for a fleeting second before the mind is engaged and starts filtering and sorting through reasoning. By acknowledging these moments of affect, you can train yourself to sit in them for longer, which allows you to interrogate the relationship between the body and the mind, and how they feed into and support each other. [49] By understanding this relationship, you can then choose to bypass some cognitive processes.

For my own project, I aimed to create a visceral reaction, drawing on sensation and bodily gestures in order to bypass my own cognitive processing, so that I could translate the sentiments, and not the words, of the conversation. I am drawing on the philosophical concept of affect theory to determine the success of my project, and investigate whether the work will hold the affect and pass it on to those who view it. Bennett states that “affect is never novel as such but layered, thickened and accumulated”[50], and it is from this quote that I began to draw connection between the process of embroidery and translation, and their connection with affect. The project is an exercise in itself, with the aim of building up my own ability to sit within affect and pay more attention to the sensations and visceral reactions in my own body, as well as potentially those in the bodies around me.

HAPTICS OF PROCESS

The anthropologist Tim Ingold highlights the importance of the in between moments that occur during a project, stating that “what happens in between (is) … the actual process”.[51] Process involves thinking through the hands as a way to develop a deeper understanding of ideas and concepts.[52] The process of manual work takes time, and fosters a slower, and often more intuitive, engagement with the work. By giving over to the process being part of the work, there is freedom to explore possibilities and accommodate unpredictability, without the constraints of a defined, polished outcome.

Process art, as defined by TATE gallery, refers to art where the process of making is not concealed, but rather becomes the work.[53] The making, including the interaction between the materials and the artist’s hand, give meaning and purpose to the work. Ingold believes that because the “hand is an extension of the brain”[54], the manual process of making can be used as a way of more intuitive thinking. The process of manual labour inevitably involves activating the body’s senses. Materials and objects are seen, felt, heard, touched and, sometimes, tasted. Proprioception is experienced as a visceral feeling throughout the labour, as the body moves in space.[55] The idea of incorporating haptics into the artistic process brings together affect and process, creating a more complete work. By allowing the body to move, it becomes more open to the senses.[56]  Repetition of manual actions creates rhythm and muscle memory, which frees the mind to perceive what may have remained unnoticed, had more cognitive effort gone into doing the manual work. Ingold states that repetition is a non-verbal way of conversing with yourself, others and objects. This process “is haptic –whether by hand or by eye. It is feeling-full”.[57] Haptics allows emotion to enter the making process. The “rhythmic movement”[58] of the repetitive actions done in a process such as embroidery creates a more complete understanding of ideas, objects and their contexts.

Traditional crafts such as embroidery are associated with manual labour and everyday living, and this may explain why they have been undervalued as an artistic process.[59] These crafts place more emphasis on the process, and less emphasis on a conceptual framework,[60] which is the basis for the majority of fine arts practice. It has taken the perspective of an anthropologist like Ingold, to realise the inherent value of everyday cultural objects and processes, such as pottery and weaving.  Ingold values the domestic settings in which these objects and processes were created, and is therefore able to afford them a greater amount of evaluation, consideration and respect.

Embroidery not only involves the repetitive manual labour identified by Ingold, but also incorporates his idea of lines.[61] Ingold outlines the idea of lines as a universal reference to life. The lines created by living are recorded in diverse ways, including embroidery, music, and maps. This mark-making process records the stories, however vague or abstract they may be, of our lives.[62] While embroidery is an act of craft and making, it has a strong historical element embedded within it.[63] Traditionally, women would sit in circles engaging in conversation and thinking, filling in time, whilst embroidering. The making process occurred amidst the conversations, gossip, laughter, and ebb and flow of friendships. This traditional view of embroidery has been associated with the “repression and subjugation”[64] of women, but has also been associated with women taking control, with “the embroiderer’s silence [and] concentration… suggest(ing).., a kind of autonomy”.[65]

There is something radical about embroidery. A small gesture, a miniscule trace of line and thread, has the ability to carry historical weight and embrace political activism within the stitches. Aspects of embroidery have been reclaimed, in a bid to elevate the craft and recognise the inherent value in both the process and the work.[66] [67] This has taken embroidery out of the domain of submissive ‘women’s work’, and situated it firmly in the art world. Tal Fitzpatrick and Kate Just’s project, COVID-19 Quilt (2020- ), invited people across the world to participate in a virtual project, submitting a square image of an embroidered/textile work, to become part of a virtual quilt.[68] The project embraces the idea of ‘craftivism’, where the radical and subversive aspects of craft meet political activism. [69] When embroidery is used in the creation of art today, it carries its historical context with it, and acts as a subversive element, by virtue of its ability to engage with the audience. What is said with the stitches, what the process implies and the weight it carries, makes embroidery a powerful medium.

Embroidery holds a space where I can have a dialogue with myself without ever needing to speak. It allows me to take pause and process my own thoughts and feelings subconsciously, while engaging in the manual process of hand stitching. The colours, shapes and patterns come intuitively, and it is not until I look back once I am out of the making space that I can ‘read’ this transcript of my inner dialogue. I run my hands over the stitches, feel the spacing, texture and tension they hold, and I can feel the thoughts. There are no words; it is all a language of emotion and gesture. This inner dialogue led me to consider what would happen when you extended this process to include other people? Was there a way of translating conversations with another person through intuitive process, and, if so, what would that look like?

Coming from a sculptural practice, I have always been very interested in the process and the haptics of creating, including experiencing the sense of touch and repetitive motion. The muscle memory that repetitive manual work creates allows the mind to wander, and creates space for the artist to sit within the affect. The work itself is not just the refined end product, but also the process of making that is normally overlooked in the finished work. I wanted to have my project be about the process, above all else, so that the final outcomes are just a result of the process, and not the focus. I wanted to experience the manual labour and repetition that embroidery involves to allow the hands and mind to become one. In this way, I hoped to experience the conversational encounter on a deeper level.

This is where my project lies, in creating a space for conversations to exist and be interpreted through my own embroidery methodology.  I wanted the embroidery to be an intuitive process, with no trialling of colours, techniques or patterns. Choosing to employ small stitches allowed me to create more organic, flowing shapes, rather than being confined within the constraints of geometry. As I engaged in dialogue with each participant, my hands were free to do their own work, selecting the threads and stitching the lines in an automatic way, without deliberate thought. The process became intuitive. My muscle memory was engaged as I let the conversation flow from my ear, through my hands, onto the material. The repetitive push and pull of the needle and thread through the surface of the material put my body into a kind of trance, which created a state that was more receptive to unconscious messages from my conversational partner.

MATERIALITY OF TRANSLATION

Translation has been used as a method to revitalise works and make them accessible to audiences across different times, places and social contexts. The process of translation involves stripping language back to its meaning and then shifting that meaning to a new context.[70] The translated work, due to this process, can never be true to the original. The role of the translator is to choose what is retained and what is lost in the work.[71] Translations of ancient texts such as The Illiad vary greatly, with some placing greater emphasis on the Trojans, for example, and others focusing more on the Achaeans. This subjective nature has the ability to change the entire story, while still remaining faithful, to some degree, to the original work. It is through its subjective nature that translation becomes a work of its own.[72] When engaging with a translated work, it is vital to take note that it was “not the voice of the reader that created these inscriptions… it was the hand of the scribe”.[73] The translator is unable to put aside their own social and cultural background, and therefore will always embed a part of themselves in the translation, by choosing, highlighting and discarding elements.

Jirí Levy, the Hungarian translator, states that because of the subjective nature of the translation process, all translations fall into one of two categories: free or faithful.[74] Free translation takes the meaning the work evokes, rather than literally translating word for word. Faithful translation involves translating every word or phrase in their most true and literal sense. Both forms of translation have advantages and disadvantages. It would be a disadvantage to translate poetry with a faithful translation framework, as you would lose the aesthetic value of the chosen words and form. Likewise, it would be inappropriate to use free translation when translating a medical text from one language to another. It is vital for translators to fully engage with and question what the original author is trying to say.[75]

The relation between language and its cultural context can be a barrier to effective translation, as “language is deeply embedded in social practices”.[76] Translation becomes a negotiation of what information is vital to convey and, in doing so, what can be either left in a space of ambiguity, or lost. For example, when the book To Kill a Mockingbird was translated from English (a non-gendered language) into Russian (a gendered language), the protagonist, Scout, was immediately identifiable as a female character, whereas in the original English text, there was some deliberate ambiguity early on in the novel about the gender of this character. The art of translation lies in assigning value to the various elements that make up the work, and maintaining that value in the translation.

While not without its risks, translation can be an effective way to shift work from one medium or material to another, retaining the key sentiments of the original work. It also allows the translator to add their own perspective, creating a new work in itself.  Walter Benjamin states that the translator “must expand and deepen his language by means of the foreign language”.[77] The process of translation encourages a deep understanding and critical reflection of the original language. Looking at collaboration through a translation lens allows for the acknowledgement of other people’s contributions, while still allowing space for the artist to embed their own identity, and draw out elements that they deem critical.

There is a relation between affect and translation through “the materiality of language”.[78] As well as the embodiment of culture, there is a physical bodily element to the material form of language through the act of translating, writing and reading. The physical process of embroidery as a method of translating the sentiment of a conversation is about taking the form of language and transcribing through intuitive bodily gestures.  The conversation is taken out of an articulated state and into the bodily, visceral realm. Erin Manning observes “to remain post-iteratively, language must continue to express itself in a realm where thought remains pre-articulated, where concepts continue to evolve”.[79] Therefore, translation from verbal articulation into a physical embroidery transcript allows the materiality of the conversations to remain in a state of flux, with the potential to capture the affect of language whilst still remaining ambiguous enough to exist in the space of pre-articulation.

I adopted the notion of free translation for Embodying Veiled Utterances, as it was deemed more suitable for translating from a verbal medium into a visual and abstract medium. My translation process was not so much about keeping everything in the conversation, but more about choosing what to lose from the conversation, and stripping back the words to reveal the underlying sentiments. The affective nature of embroidering facilitated this process by allowing me to focus on the feeling of the conversation, as my muscle memory was engaged and my body automatically settled into the familiar, rhythmical pattern of stitching.

I made a conscious decision to allow participants to drive the conversation, both to afford them more ownership of the project, and to free me up to focus on the role of translator, as well as conversational partner. By adopting this process, I was able to intuitively translate my version of the discourse onto the material. Shifting the conversation from verbal to visual demonstrates that “translation often bears the marks of the process”.[80] In my project, the translation process becomes intertwined with the embroidery process, with each relying on the other to give the transcripts their affective resonance. The processes envelope the conversation in a shroud of colour, pattern and texture, so that the two become inextricably enmeshed. Ingold observes:

“the embroiderer… starts with traces on a surface… but in her activity with the needle she translates those traces into threads… she contrives to make the surface of the fabric disappear. For when we look at the embroidered cloth we see the lines as threads, not as traces, almost as though the cloth had itself been rendered transparent”[81] 

The process of translating language into embroidery is about finding the sentimental traces in conversation, holding onto the utterances and inflections, and stitching until they become embodied in the material. Conversation and material become one, and are no longer distinguishable from the threads. 

DISCERNING THE AFTERMATH

Using translation as a process allowed the work to hold a duality of feeling and understanding. This made it possible to capture the elements of a conversation that lay under the surface of the words. Originally, the intent was to translate in ‘real time’ by doing all embroidery work during the phone calls. However, after seeing how live translation worked during the lecture series Re-memberance, Re-Volt, Re-Emergence, (2020), it seemed that this method of translating was too superficial. I wanted to use translation as a way of sitting in affect, both experiencing and reflecting on the conversation. After reading into translation theories, it became obvious to me that if I wanted the embroidery transcripts to be translations of sentiment, it would require deeper reflection and consideration than the original ‘real time’ translation model. Whilst still translating through embroidery for the duration of each phone call, I would also embroider during moments of reflection on the conversation. This is where my own hand comes into play, as it is my subjective experience of the calls that emerges in this part of the translation.  I feel that the project holds true to the translation process of taking the original and shifting it into a new context. In addition, I was able to sit in the affect of the calls, adding a visceral element to the visual transcript.

Affect has the ability to evoke visceral sensations, which can permeate into the wider social body. Small-scale collaborative projects, such as Embodying Veiled Utterances, have the potential to use affect in order to agitate or calm the waters of the community. The elusive nature of affect lies in its ability to occupy the in-between spaces.[82] It exists in the space between body and mind, between language and feeling, and between process and outcome. Affect’s reliance on sensation makes it difficult to evaluate how and to what degree other people are affected, as well as being difficult to capture in a static outcome. For this reason, I see the process as the project, and the final outcome as a reverberation. It is not possible to give viewers of the works the same affective experience as the collaborators and artist had with the project. In displaying the embroidery in space, I aimed to create subtle vibrations, rather than a static display. Each individual conversation has a black and white ortholitho print suspended in front of the corresponding embroidery transcript, which is hung on the wall. I chose to leave a physical space between the embroidery and the portrait print for two reasons. The first was to have a physical gap so that the installation was able to hold physical space for all the unseen elements of the project. The second reason was to have the work engage the senses by creating a space where the audience can physically move around the work, shifting their focal point. The play of space in the display was to highlight “the eye…as the junction point between the brain and the world perceived”.[83] The viewer has multiple angles from which to perceive the work, to simulate movement, and to encapsulate the idea of affect being a multi-sensory experience steeped in the making process.

Adopting a process-driven framework enables events and processes to happen intuitively, but also allows the artist to question that intuition. There is time and freedom to reflect, shift and change, allowing the project to take on a life of its own. Thinking of the project as a process which involves the ethics application, the phone calls, the conversations, the making, the thinking, the reflecting, the translating, and the outcomes has fostered a spirit of inquiry and an acceptance of the fact that the process may never be fully realised, perfect or complete. Behind the scenes, many months were spent thinking, dreaming, talking, making, and reflecting. These actions were an important part of the project. Coming from a sculptural background, my focus has always been on the making, and my process has been recorded in the physical work. This project forced me to take pause, slow down and accept that much of the process would remain unseen and undocumented in any final outcome.

Continuing with my understanding of ethics as the underlying currents within the waters of social practice, an important aspect of the final outcome was addressing the collaboration.  Due to the ethical consideration of collaborating with people on the project, I wanted the participants to have authentic engagement with, and authorship of, the project. In order to create a successful collaborative process, I ensured that all participants knew they had full control over the conversations, and I ensured that they knew their input was valued and integral to the project. For example, each phone call would begin with the participant naming a colour, which I then used to select the initial thread. A by-product of the project was the strengthening of connections with each participant, at a time when social isolation due to COVID-19 was at its peak. Although the project was small in scale, it did create affective and meaningful connections. Feedback from the participants at the end of the phone call stage indicated that the lengthy, one-on-one phone calls were fulfilling a required need for regular and authentic connection.

When discussing the outcomes of this project, there is a certain level of challenge because the project was always clearly about the process, and the final outcomes are reverberations of the actual project. This reflects the interesting connection between process and affect. I will always have a subjective view of the outcomes because when I look at them, I see the process – the conversations, the push and pull of the needle – they feel alive and moving to me still. For others, who have not gone through the process of making, they will have a different experience upon viewing the outcomes. In order to give the audience an echo of the experience of the process, I want the objects to sit in physical space, so that the audience can move around them, observe the changing perspective, and physically touch them. In some small way, the audience might be able to experience an echo of the affect that I felt. If social practice is a body of water, when the audience physically interacts with the work, they touch the surface of that water, creating ripples which extend through their bodies out into the community.

“Language has been silenced ... the search for the answer led me from mouth to hand, from vocal declamations to manual gestures and to the relation between these gestures and the marks they leave on surfaces”

Tim Ingold[84]

Embodying Veiled Utterances has been an in-depth exploration of the intersection between affect theory, process and social practice. It involved intimate encounters where material became an interpretative frame for sentiment, and where conversations were translated through an intuitive process.

For me, the project was a metaphorical dipping of my toes into the waters of social practice. I wanted to see if I could produce a small-scale collaborative project that had the potential to cause an affective ripple into the wider community. Whether or not this occurred I will never know for sure but what I can be sure of is that I have, in some way sat in affect and let it flow through my body and into the embroidered transcripts.

.   .   .

Ben Highmore spoke of “the murky connection between fabrics and feelings”[85] and I think that resonates with my project. As I run my hands across the surface of the embroidery, there is a sensation that I cannot place. I muse upon it over and over again, hoping that if I linger a little longer I will be able to bring it forth in words, but I cannot. It lies entwined in the threads, hidden within the surface of stitches. As soon as I move my hand away, it dies down to a faint tingling of the fingers, but I need only stretch out my hand and let the tips of my fingers trace the edges and caress the textures for the sensation to return like an old friend.  The final outcome is merely an echo of the process. Hung on a wall, away from the warmth of a lap, the embroidered works take on a different role, reflecting the echoes of what was said and unsaid. The process itself remains unrefined, containing raw and delicate moments of conversation within the stitches. So I look at the works on the wall one last time, my eyes shifting focus from the portrait to the embroidery and back again, those embodiments of veiled utterances – objects which incorporate covered expressions – reverberating their masked sentiments.

.   .   .

 [1] Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, (London: The Women’s Press Ltd, 1984), pg. 213.

[2] Shannon Jackson, Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics, (New York: Routledge, 2011).

[3] Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine.

[4] Nato Thompson, Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century, (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2015).

[5] Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, Thought in the Act: Passages in the Ecology of Experience, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014).

[6] Darren O’Donnell, Social Acupuncture, (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2006).

[7] Gregory Sholette, “Beuysian Pedagogies: A Counter-history”, The Art of Direct Action: Social Sculpture and Beyond, ed. Karen Van Den Berg, Cara M. Jordan and Philipp Kleinmichel, (Berlin: Sternberg Press,  2019), pg. 123.

[8] Sholette, The Art of Direct Action: Social Sculpture and Beyond.

[9] Creative Times, Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011, ed. Nato Thompson, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012).

[10] Creative Times, Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011.

[11] O’Donnell, Social Acupuncture, pg.29.

[12] O’Donnell, Social Acupuncture, pg.27.

[13] Clare McCracken, “My Place, Your Place, Our Place”, published 2014, https://www.mccracken.com.au/#/my-place-your-place-our-place/.

[14] Lisa Hilli, “Just Like Home”, Lisa Hilli Practice, published 2013, https://lisahilli.com/home-new/papalum-na-lima-practice/just-like-home-2008/.

[15] Lee Mingwei, “The Mending Project”, published 2009, https://www.leemingwei.com/.

[16] O’Donnell, Social Acupuncture, pg.27.

[17] Nicholas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, (France: Les Presses Du Réel, 2002).

[18] Wendy J. Austin, “Relational Ethics”, in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, ed. Lisa M. Given (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2008), 748-749.

[19] Walead Beshty, Ethics, ed. Walead Beshty, (London: Whitechapel Gallery & Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015).

[20] Barbara Bolt, “Beneficence and Contemporary Art: When Aesthetic Judgment meets Ethical Judgment”, Visual Methodologies, vol.3, no.2 (Dec 2015): 53-66.

[21] Sergey Nechayev, The Revolutionary Catechism, (Russia: 1869).

[22] Andrés David Montenegro Rosero, “Locating Work in Santiago Sierra’s Artistic Practice”, Ephemera, vol.13, no.1 (Feb 2013): 99-115.

[23] Grant H. Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art, (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004).

[24] John L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), pg.7.

[25]Austin, How To Do Things With Words.

[26] Guy Cools, “The Art of Listening”, in The Ethics of Art: Ecological Turns in the Performing Arts, edited by Guy Cools and Pascal Gielen, (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2014).

[27] Cools, “The Art of Listening”, pg.52.

[28] Pablo Helguera, Education for Socially Engaged Art, (New York: Jorge Pinto Books Inc., 2011).

[29] Carolyn Eskdale, “Dialogue Pressings”, Melbourne, 2020, https://www.carolynaskdale.net/dialouge-pressings .

[30] Cools, “The Art of Listening”.

[31] Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).  

[32] Eve Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).

[33] Patricia T. Clough and Jean Halley, The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).

[34] Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, ed. Clare Carlisle, trans. George Eliot (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020).

[35] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brain Massumi (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).

[36] Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth  “An Inventory of Shimmers”, in Affect Theory Reader, eds. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), pg.1.

[37] Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation.

[38] Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, pg.28.

[39] Sara Ahmed, “Happy Objects”, in Affect Theory Reader, eds. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).

[40] Ahmed, “Happy Objects”, pg.29.

[41] Jill Bennett, Practical Aesthetics: Events, Affects and Art After 9/11, (New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2012), pg.13.

[42] Jill Bennett, Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).

[43] Bennett, Practical Aesthetics: Events, Affects and Art After 9/11.

[44] Manning and Massumi, Thought in the Act: Passages in the Ecology of Experience, pg.45.

[45] Elspeth Probyn, “Writing Shame”, in Affect Theory Reader, eds. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), pg.80.

[46] Manning and Massumi, Thought in the Act: Passages in the Ecology of Experience.

[47] Patricia T. Clough, “The Affective Turn: Political Economy, Biomedia, and Bodies”, in Affect Theory Reader, eds. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), pg.209.

[48] Clough “The Affective Turn: Political Economy, Biomedia, and Bodies”, pg.211.

[49] Manning and Massumi, Thought in the Act: Passages in the Ecology of Experience.

[50] Bennett, Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art, pg.76.

[51] Tim Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, (New York: Routledge, 2013), pg.25.

[52] Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture.

[53] “Process Art”,  TATE Gallery, accessed October 2020, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/process-art

[54] Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, pg.112.

[55] Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture.

[56] Erin Manning, Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009).

[57] Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, pg.121.

[58] Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, pg.115.

[59] Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine.

[60] Elizabeth J.W. Barber, Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean, (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1991).

[61] Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History, (New York: Routledge, 2007).

[62] Ingold, Lines: A Brief History.

[63] Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine.

[64] Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, pg.10.

[65] Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, pg.10.

[66] Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine.

[67] Tal Fitzpatrick, Craftivism: A Manifesto/ Methodology, (Melbourne: Tal Fitzpatrick, 2018).

[68] Kate Just & Tal Fitzpatrick (@covid19quilt), “Covid-19 Global Quilt”, Instagram, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/covid19quilt/.

[69] Fitzpatrick, Craftivism: A Manifesto/ Methodology.

[70] Jirí Levy, The Art of Translation, ed. Zuzana Jettmarová, trans. Patrick Corness, (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co, 2011).

[71] Levy, The Art of Translation.

[72] Levy, The Art of Translation.

[73] Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, pg.112.

[74] Levy, The Art of Translation.

[75] Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator”, in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968).

[76] Angeliki Alvanoudi, “Travelling Between Languages and Disciplines: Linguistic and Interdisciplinary Translation Practices in Women’s/Gender Studies”, Graduate Journal of Social Science, vol.6, no.3 (Dec 2009), pg.22.

[77] Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator”, pg.73.

[78] Christine E. Iwanicki, “Living Out Loud Within the Body of the Letter: Theoretical Underpinnings of the Materiality of Language”, College English, vol.63, no.5 (May 2003), pg. 496.

[79] Manning, Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy, pg.8.

[80] Levy, The Art of Translation, pg.69.

[81] Ingold, Lines: A Brief History, pg.52.

[82] Bennett, Practical Aesthetics: Events, Affects and Art After 9/11.

[83] Andrew Meirion Jones and Andrew Cochrane, The Archaeology of Art: Materials, Practices, Affects, (New York: Routledge, 2018), pg.78.

[84] Ingold, Lines: A Brief History, pg.1-2.

[85] Ben Highmore, “Bitter after Taste: Affect, Food, and Social Aesthetics”, in The Affect Theory Reader, eds. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 119.