electronic text + textiles project

A platform facilitating artistic investigation and production in the fields of literature, language, textiles, and material culture, promoting expression at the intersections of print, cloth, and electronic technologies (http://www.e-text-textiles.lv).

The textile and text connection runs deep – as can be inferred from Derrida's writings on Plato where both construction and deconstruction find expression in conceptual 'threads.' Concurrently, there is a long Islamic tradition of embroidering or weaving Koranic texts into cloth, a production of stable, unchanging forms that remains a powerful alternative to Western organicism and becoming. Alternatives exist, however, within Western culture also, as generations of little girls learnt their alphabet by embroidering it on fabric along with edifying precepts and biblical texts. Metaphors of thread and weaving have frequently been used in relation to written texts to symbolise the interwoven relationship between ideas and language.

Historically it is possible to cite numerous links between text and textile crafts. Currently there are new convergences involving conceptual threads and material practices in a multiplicity of media. One example near at hand is this journal, ebr (www.electronicbookreview.com), edited by the organizers of the Project. In ebr, long recognized as a cultural leader by both literary and textiles media, the notion of a periodical ‘issue’ is replaced by multiple conceptual ‘threads,’ and a weaving metaphor governs the journal design. The thread structure allows content to be released continuously because each essay can be gathered not only with current items, but with past items that participate in the thread, thus extending the essay’s life and connectivity. Hundreds of essays, poems, free-standing Web projects, and fictional narratives both produced for the journal and selected from the Web environment can be ‘gathered’ (like the folds in a cloth), glossed, and combined according to common semantic features. More flexible than the notion of a hypertext ‘link,’ the weaving of literary and cultural texts becomes a process, as much a patchwork as a network. It is here, in electronic book review threads such as webarts, It is here, in the electronic book review threads such as webarts and end construction, that writers and artists associated with the Project will write about, and enact, the key concepts informing their researches.

Textiles are one of the most ancient and important components of our material culture. In the form of clothing, architectural membranes and interior fabrics, textiles have been a non-verbal performance throughout various social, economical, and political stages in every culture. Traditionally considered a feminine art form, textiles make explicit, and visible, the way that communication is layered, containing many nuances and meanings in every expression. A textile, like a literary text, is capable of reflecting on various cultures and values through the artist’s choice of colours, patterns, and textures. Textual practice, with all of its deviation from linear narrative and single-minded political quests, has often brought feminist issues out of the background and into consciousness; even in Homer’s Odyssey the queen Penelope is told to leave the business of the state to men and get back to her weaving.

Rapid technological and scientific developments in the past two decades have made a huge impact on our lives. Creative industries, including text and textile based practices, are not only commenting on these issues but also exploring the new possibilities, giving visual, material form to the changes, and so participating in, not just reacting to, the present.

The Electronic Text and Textiles Project examines the position of text and textiles within the constantly shifting technological reality through theoretical and practice-based enquiry. It hosts creative makers, writers, researchers, and theoreticians in residence, initiates dialogue and organises presentations and seminars. The Project offers professional development, networking possibilities and small-scale production facilities for visiting artists, designers, writers, and scholars from Europe and beyond. It is open to anyone interested in the cultural debate evolving around, across, or through the interaction of literature, language, technologies, and the arts, in particular textiles related. The expected result is a dynamic and critical exchange among the various agents within and outside the Electronic Text and Textiles Project.

Electronic Text and Textiles Project facilitates practical and scholarly investigations and material productions by artists, who wish to give direction to the changing technologies and define the terms of a changing cultural context. The project hosts not just commentaries on new technology; it is itself a practical, social, and aesthetic outcome of the technologies. (The interaction between stability and impermanence is conveyed in the ebr thread titled, 'end construction.')

The aims of the Electronic Text and Textiles Project are:

• to provide a common platform for the workers of literature, art and design and to enable theoretical and artistic investigation, production, presentation, and discussion;
• to support trans-disciplinary and transcultural exchange of ideas and knowledge among the practitioners and scholars of literature, languages, science, and the arts;
• to foster and promote forms of creativity and interdisciplinary research using technologies in relation to these practices;
• to identify and study the territories that text and textiles occupy within the context of changing technologies and electronic fabrications.

Residency is based in Riga, the capital of Latvia. It welcomes artists, designers, writers, researchers and theoreticians working within or across the fields of literature and the arts, in particular textiles related. The Electronic Text and Textiles Project encourages Residents, through a mix of conceptual investigations and material productions, to join in a decades-long project among writers and artists involved in the Alt-X and ebr network. This group has been working consistently, not just to replace one technology with another in literary and arts practices, but to give direction and cultural context to technological change and the electronic disturbance.

Residencies shall be conducted through self-directed individual or collaborative work/research projects, which should maintain a high level of quality with an international, worldly perspective. We are happy to discuss different models of residencies and seek expressions of interest from artists, designers, writers, scientists and theoreticians interested in exploring connections between text and textiles in general and the impact of technologies on these practices in particular.

Artists, designers, writers, and theoreticians who submit a project proposal and are subsequently selected, become residents at the Electronic Text and Textiles Project. The term of a Residency can be as short as a week or as long as several months. During the period of one's stay, a Resident artist, designer, or writer will have exclusive use of a live/work apartment in Riga, access to artists, writers, and culture administrators working in the Baltics, and continuing access to an extensive network of writers, artists, critics, and scholars working in electronic environments worldwide.

Residents will be free to pursue their own or collaborative projects, although we expect that the Resident's work should appear in some form in ebr (http://www.electronicbookreview.com) or at the Alt-X site (www.altx.com). Residents will be expected, also, to meet with members of the local arts and literary communities, either informally or by giving a lecture or seminar at the Residence workplace.

The Residency is housed in a newly renovated apartment building in the 'quiet center' of Riga, not far from the River Daugava and the planned Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art. The second-floor apartment, which is combined with a studio (135m2), is sparcely furnished, spacious, and equipped with most amenities except for a television. The building, renovated by in 2004, was originally the home of the Riga Sailor's Union, a Bauhaus construction in a neighbourhood of Bauhaus and Jugenstil buildings and Nineteenth Century wooden houses. A bank of windows overlooks a quiet cobbled street and Petrov Park, featuring a Washington Square style arch, a monument to a tree planted there by Peter the Great, and numerous sculptures and monuments from the Soviet era.

In the apartment, Residents will have use of a spacious office/studio area, 2 writing desks, an HP laptop (Windows; Adobe; DSL Internet access); a telephone allowing internationally direct dialling; a dining table seating six; and a bookshelf featuring publications by past Residents. There is good lighting throughout the apartment and lamps over tables, divans, and workspaces, a full kitchen, bathroom, and a separate living/bedroom with a convertable sofa/bed. The apartment/studio can comfortably accommodate 2 people. The studio is appropriate for 'tidy' practices such as writing, collation of information, digital work, visual research, drawing, and small-scale experimentation and production. Larger productions such as weaving, printing, and so forth shall be executed in collaboration with other venues, which will be negotiated on an individual basis.

The apartment is a five minute walk from buses and trams, which run regularly at all hours and normally reach the Old City in five or ten minutes. The walk to the Old City is between 20 and 30 minutes, and it takes just 10 minutes to reach the famed row of Jugenstil houses on Alberta Street.

Residents pay 40 Euro per day per apartment/studio, all bills included (except telephone bill). If selected for the residency Electronic Text and Textiles Project Residents have to secure their own funding for their travel, subsistence, and materials.

Applicants are asked to submit a one-page (up to 500 words) letter indicating how your work intersects with the Project (as described above). Please include with the letter your name, affiliation, email address, a short biopic, CV, and 6-8 digital images of relevant recent work as compressed jpgs (arts and design practitioners) or a sample of written work (writers and scholars).

When applying, please indicate the preferred length and time of your residency along with any particular equipment needs. Details will be worked out in subsequent correspondence with the Project Directors. Letters of application should be sent (by email only) to Project Manager Aija Freimane, ebr@altx.com.

Ongoing – preferably at least 2 months before the start of the expected Residency.

Prof. Joseph Tabbi is the author of Cognitive Fictions (Minnesota 2002), and Postmodern Sublime (Cornell 1995,) books that examine the effects of new technologies on contemporary American fiction. He edits the Electronic Book Review and has edited and introduced William Gaddis's last fiction and collected non-fiction (Viking/Penguin). His essay on Mark Amerika appeared at the Walker Art Center's phon:e:me site, a 2000 Webby Award nominee. Also online (at the Iowa Review Web) is an essay-narrative, titled "Overwriting," an interview, and a review of his recent work. He is professor of English at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Director of the Electronic Literature Organization.

Relevant links:
http://www.altx.com/ebr
http://phoneme.walkerart.org/
http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/feature/tabbi/
http://www.eliterature.org

Dr. Zane Berzina is a textile designer, artist, and researcher. She works on interdisciplinary projects across the fields of science, technology, art, and crafts. Her practice and research evolves around responsive and interactive textiles, new materials, processes and technologies as well as current biomimetic practices. Recent work explores skin as a 'naturally intelligent material' and examines its aesthetic and functional potential for translation into active textile systems. Current investigations are concerned with issues regarding biological senses such as vision, olfactory, and touch in particular. She is leading a group of international researchers, practitioners and scientists on a research project 'E-Static Shadows' funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

She holds degrees from The University of the Arts Berlin; Master of Art in European Fashion and Textile Design from Southampton University, UK; PhD from the University of the Arts London and has widely participated in exhibitions around Europe. Zane Berzina is involved in cultural debate across design, art, technology, and creativity, and contributes to international conferences and academic publications. She has lectured at the Goldsmiths College in London, Department of Visual Art and at The University of Arts Berlin, College of Design and Architecture, Institute for Experimental Fashion and Textile Design, Germany. Currently she is Research Fellow at the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles, Goldsmiths College and Associate Member of Goldsmiths Digital Studios, London.

Relevant links:
http://www.zaneberzina.com
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/constance-howard/research/research-projects2.php
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gds/people.php

Dr. Manuela Rossini has joined the team of Co-Creative Directors in May 2007. She studied English and Spanish at the University of Basel and then worked at the University of St. Gallen for Business Administration, Economics, Law, and Social Science. While there, she helped produce an English-German critical edition of Shakespeare's King Lear, before she went to Cardiff to do a second MA in Critical and Cultural Theory in 1994. From 1995-2000 she was teaching in the Department of English at the University of Basel, from where she also received her PhD in 2002 with a dissertation called From House to Home: Meanings of the family in early modern English drama and culture. She acted as the coordinator of a proposal for an interdisciplinary National Centre for Competence in Research in the field of Gender Studies before a postdoc scholarship of the Swiss National Science Foundation took her to the Netherlands. She organised the 4th European Conference of the SLSA (Society for Literature, Science and the Arts), which took place in Amsterdam in June 2006. Her current transdisciplinary book project looks at figurations of the posthuman (body, subject, culture) in literary, philosophical, and scientific texts. Picking up the thread offered by Leibniz and then Deleuze, she sees the world (and herself) as a complex texture of infinite folds that transversally weave through compressed space-time in a continuous movement of becoming.

Relevant links:
http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/m.s.rossini/
http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?SerieId=EP
http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?SerieId=CPH