10 February 2007

the repetition of knitting nancy and pinning down words

Kitchen Antics and Appliances (KK&A) met at Tate Britain to continue dialogue and research, including what it felt like to try out knitting nancies, purchased on ebay, (join us in trying it out and let us know how you got on). Those with good memories may remember using these as children and making them from wooden cotton reels, its also often called french knitting or spool Knitting. Françoise Dupré has done some interesting work with french Knitting. Its a communal soporific activity, we sat at a table in the coffee shop surrounded by comings and goings. An American woman was pulled into the activity, remembering how she used to make them with a cork, she also pointed out how she could never make out what the purpose of this activity was, after all making a 20 metre sausage the diameter of your middle figure did strike all of us as being work without purpose. However, carrying out an activity without a goal or need to achieve created a space of openness and space for talking and wandering with our thoughts. Barbara is knitting a red and white nancie making a sort of danger boundary.

We also thrashed out a 20 word strap line concerning our work for Depot Untapped, it was a challenge to try and pin down 20 words with the KA&A three voices! I timed how long it took and I think it was 1.10 mins, not bad for us. How do you work in collaboration, without dumbing down to the lowest denominator to gain agreement, not good keep going get through the pain threshold, dont make too many compromises, all voices are important.

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