Where Do We Draw The Line?
August 23rd & August 25th, 2021
Virtual Workshop directed by Adeline Kueh
This two-part experimental workshop will examine the poetics of Line and Stitch and the ways in which drawing may be used in our everyday practices. We will explore the relationship between drawing and the architecture of the everyday: from the ways a line may be employed as a divider that separates the self from (an)other; to drawing as a form of embodied meaning-making and storytelling across time and space.
Reflecting on the inner geography of the pandemic, unpacking placeness and memory through observation of texture and surface, tracing, mark making, frottage, collage, decollage, we will look at the ways the line can become a form of stitching or mending and other kinds of meaning making.
We will also examine ways of recording and translating our body, our pulse, breath, blood pressure, gestures and movements in our surroundings as a kind of translation project.
Participants are encouraged to bring to the workshop a few images or objects from one’s past and present everyday surrounding.
Part 1
line | lʌɪn | noun 1 a long, narrow mark or band
• Mathematics a straight or curved continuous extent of length without breadth.
• a direct course • a furrow or wrinkle in the skin, especially on the face • a contour or outline considered as a feature of design or composition
• (on a map or graph) a curve connecting all points having a specified common property.
• a line marking the starting or finishing point in a race
• a notional limit or boundary
Line is explored in terms of physical intimacy and distance, and how the environment we live in presently demands such demarcations but more significantly, are there ways in which we may approach these issues gently, despite the pervasive violence & grief. Using a personal positioning as a way of “ ‘know[ing] the world inwardly’ so that the deeper we go into ourselves, the wider we go into society.” (Trinh T. Minh-ha), the first part of this workshop will have the participants introduce themselves before the artist gives examples of works that employ conceptual drawing.
Part 2
stitch | stich | noun 1 a loop of thread or yarn resulting from a single pass or movement of the needle in sewing, knitting, or crocheting
• a loop of thread used to join the edges of a wound or surgical incision
• a method of sewing, knitting, or crocheting producing a particular pattern or design
• the smallest item of clothing
• verb [with object] 1 make, mend, or join (something) with stitches
As an exercise that deals with the act of stitching, we will open up ideas as to what constitutes stitching. How do we look at the following: the fragmented, individuated vs connectedness, encounters, togetherness, stitching the body and the second skin/clothes, and montaging.Thinking again about space and location, I hear the statement ‘our struggle is also a struggle of memory against forgetting’;a politicization of memory that distinguishes nostalgia, that longing for something to be as once it was, a kind of useless act, from that remembering that serves to illuminate and transform the present. – bell hooks, 1989.
The transformative act against forgetting culminates in using the processes and techniques in the workshop. From line to stitch, there is strength in togetherness, and this workshop hopes to act as a way to narrate differing traditions into our present day reality.
