"Walking Threads, Threading Walk": Embroidering Reflection

Abstract

This both visual and textual contribution consists of a series of four separate embroideries on textile (Fig. 1, 2, 3, 4), which can be assembled into a unique piece (Fig. 5), and of a text, that engages with a reflection on the overall process of creation with and transformation of a particular daily object: a yarn of golden thread. The contribution has been inspired by the first ‘Walking Threads’ walk and event in Seaton Park, Old Aberdeen, March 2014, from which the ongoing ‘Walking Threads’ project has been initiated. The work is intended as a specific way of ‘thinking through making’ (Ingold 2013) and of further developing the research insights that appeared during and after that walk. In what ways materials, artefacts, skill apprenticeship, gesture, , lines, breathing and the ‘weather-world’ (Ingold 2007a, b, 2015) can relate to each other? It is also a personal attempt to respond to the Ingoldian call towards a ‘Graphic’ Anthropology’, within which ‘to follow the materials, to learn the movements and to draw the lines’ (Ingold 2013) are the main points at the very core of its agenda.