(art practical) DIMENSIONS: EXPANDED MEAsURES OF TEXTILES

DIMENSIONS: EXPANDED MEASURES OF TEXTILES

Art Practical

In February 2015, I was invited to guest edit a special issue on textiles for Art Practical. For issue 6.3 Dimensions: Expanded Measures of Textiles, contributors included, in order: Elissa Auther; Sheila Pepe and LJ Roberts; John Brodie; Sonya Clark; Carissa Carman and Rowland Ricketts III; Bukola Koiki; Vanessa Kauffman; Rebecca Gates; T'ai Smith; Danny Orrendorff; Susan Beal; Emily Katz, and myself (introduction).

Here is what I proposed: 

When asked to edit an issue on textiles, I immediately thought of how I use Neil Cummings’ ReadingThings. This out-of-print text addresses the slippery intangibilities of representation of objects outside of the circles of commodity culture. It sits on my bedside table, where I can randomly access it at any time. Open it to any page, and a productive connection, thought, or question emerges from any number of kinds of information about things: a photograph, drawing, two kinds of verb lists, essays, etc.

It is the sensation of discovery triggered by the volume’s collected content that is the aim of this issue of Art Practical. Mirroring the way in which opening the page of a book can lead to unexpected paths and thinking, each contribution is chosen to be a platform for discovery within the issue, and, by extension, of the internet. It is a proposition, using an online journal as the tool of conveyance. It is an effort to push what is possible in understanding textiles as a broad subject, and also in what an online journal like Art Practical can achieve in connecting content to the medium and context in which it exists. In this way, the issue is intended to operate as a facilitator of inquiry as much as a document of thinking through textiles right now.