the threader and the Threaded

the threader and the Threaded
UCSD Main Gallery December 2022

Photos by Nykelle Devivo

The threader and the Threaded is a two part 24-hour performance resulting in an installation. In this performance, I set up physical and numeric constraints in which I had to abide. On the back wall of the gallery are two peg boards, each holding 144 cones of white cotton. On the walls, to the right and the left of the back wall, are 144 eyelet screws in a grid pattern mimicking the forms of the pegboards. In the center of the room resides my loom.

In the first part of this gesture, I begin by tugging the dangling cotton threads, one by one, pulling them to and through the corresponding eyelets, then guiding the thread to my loom. Once here I thread the string through the dent. I repeat this 288 times.

In the second part of this performance, I kneel at the backside of my loom on a sheepskin I tanned the summer before. I pull each of the cotton threads through the eyes of the loom until all of the threads are on the backside of the loom.
In this exercise, I’m wondering how I relate to my loom. If the loom is a body, what are the bounds and expansions of our relationship? What is the loom’s body? That body’s functions? How does my body relate to that body? Collaborator, partner, submissive, tend-er, antagonizer. Indira Allegra asks, “how might looms and other tools of the weaver’s craft become organs of memory, pulling body into intimate choreography involving maker, tool, and narrative of place?”. I wonder-how do we perform together? How does the physicality of weaving serve as therapeutic re-processing? Can the tools enable me to think of sculptures not as fixed but as a process of transformation?

The loom, as a machine, acts as a mediatory system through which I can set up a series of problems or struggles that need to be resolved through the process. I work within the limitations that I have prescribed–problems arise, mistakes happen. I am working at the edge of what I can do, courting the mistake, seeking out that area that is susceptible to the mistake, because that is how something new can happen. (Moten) But of course, nothing is new. There are no new ideas. “There are only new ways of making them felt, of examining what our ideas really mean (feel like) on Sunday Morning at 7 AM, after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving birth; while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warmings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while tasting our new possibilities and strengths.” (Lorde)