A Walking-Stitching Practice
My practice centres on three key threads of inquiry; Place as Object, Place as Subject and Place as Agent. Each thread adopts a different philosophical perspective to enable a holistic and comprehensive reflection on our relationship to and positionality in the suburban place. Situated specifically within a suburban space, walking-stitching interventions offer opportunities to explore familiar sites in unfamiliar ways. Building on the idea that people are not simply users of place, but help to create and shape it. I explore both solo and participatory walking-stitching interventions which enable the walker-stitcher to become actively involved in the experience of space in a range of new and thought-provoking ways.
Place as Object
Place as Object invites a human-centred exploration that considers how our knowledge of the world emerges from a bodily anchored first-person perspective. It centres on a being-in-the-world that examines our relationships to and experiences of place objectively by inviting analysis of all the ways we are bound to, connected and entangled in place, reflecting-on-place. Place constitutes the object of phenomenological reflection. I reflect on my experience of place through a series of attentive and attitudinal walking-stitching interventions.
I employ methods for counting the number of steps whilst I walk, and record the sounds of place using an audio recorder. I listen to these sounds whilst stitching and make a stitch for each step into a piece of cloth where the rhythm of stitching echoes the repetition of steps. The cloth becomes place as stitches are made on it, one stitch for every step, promoting a meditative approach to thinking about place that reconceptualises the path as a stitched line. The thread, when moving through the cloth-place becomes twisted, knotted and tangled in itself. As the thread pulls though the fabric it becomes bound to place, moving the experience of the walk away from me and into the material itself, as repetition and the layering of stitches echo the tracing and retracing of a path. The metaphorical entanglement of walker and place are mirrored in the cloth-place: the entangled thread becomes a permanent stitch on the cloth, emblematic of the fleeting footstep that leaves only a trace on the surface of a path. The purposive plain stitching echoes the domestic labour of the suburban space, providing a perspective of stitch and walking as functional necessity that mirrors that of the suburban space.
Place as Subject
Place as Subject invites a more collaborative practice. Rather than reflecting on the phenomenon of place as a retrospective recording seen through the previous thread, it explores methods of ambulatory stitching to respond to the sensory cues and demands of place. Place becomes a collaborator, I am navigated by place, responding to the different sights, smells and textures around me. Whilst walking I make physical stitches in cloth. This approach to being-with place invites opportunities to examine my role and position in the world . Stitching whilst walking in place captures what it means to move, respond to, and reflect in a space.
Intuitively making marks with thread whilst I walk, my hands make judgements about when and how to sew. The resulting stitches lack order and objectivity, mirroring footsteps, appearing as maps that trace marks made in and with place. Much in the same way as the stitch marks the cloth, forming a thread-path, the walker marks place - each step leaving a trace in place, a mark made by something that is no longer there. The marks made in place are echoed in the stitches made by the needle on the cloth-place. Place as subject invites a discursive engagement and intra-action with place. As this thesis will demonstrate walking-stitching-with the subjectivity of place provides a new conceptual understanding and mode of entangled practice that considers walking within romanticised and psychogeographic perspectives. It explores walking-stitching in place as a more than functional act and considers notions of suburban place as a site of creative practice.
Place as Agent
Place as agent considers the corporeality of place to consider a transcorporeality that challenges notions of embodiment and emplacement. Adopting a new materialist perspective, it considers the agency, vibrancy and vitality of the inter/intra-connected and intra-active more-than-human actants, whilst still recognising the positionality of the human within the entanglement of place through notions of making-with.
Through intra-active stitching I adopt methods for becoming-with place by making physical stitches in public spaces. Tying threads to the suburban furniture that guides our use of space but is often overlooked I becoming a part of place. These pieces of suburban furniture guide where and how we use spaces, demarking walkways and directing traffic, providing light and making spaces seemingly safer. They hold power and agency within the space, forming an integral part of the assemblage of place, yet they are often unacknowledged. The physical act of knotting threads in place forms a binding connection, making a mark in the landscape. Threads were left in situ for several days, becoming saturated with placeness. The tangible and intangible agents of place – weather, pollution, sun, rain, animal and plant life marked the threads, I had no control of what happens in this time. The stitching and unstitching of the threads became almost ritualistic, each thread embodying the time and place of its stitching.
