Aug 18 2021
current call for submission ~ deadline 8/27:
What does the following passage mean to you? How does it related to your artistic, textile arts or weaving practice? How does it relate to your community, consumer habits and daily life?
On Weaving by Anni Albers / Chapter 8. Tactile Sensibility
All progress, so it seems, is coupled to regression elsewhere. We have advanced in general, for instance, in regard to verbal articulation — the reading and writing public of today is enormous. But we certainly have grown increasingly insensitive in our perception by touch, the tactile sense.
No wonder a faculty that is so largely unemployed in our daily plotting and bustling is degenerating. Our materials come to us already ground and chipped and crushed and powdered and mixed and sliced, so that only the finale in a long sequence of operations from matter to product is left to us: we merely toast the bread. No need to get our hands into the dough. No need — alas, also little chance — to handle materials, to test their consistency, their density, their lightness, their smoothness. No need for us, either, to make our implements, to shape our pots or fashion our knives. Unless we are specialized producers, our contact with materials is rarely more than a contact with the finished product. We remove a cellophane wrapping and there it is — the bacon, or the razor blade, or the pair of nylons. Modern industry saves us endless labor and drudgery; but, Janus-faced, it also bars us from taking part in the forming of material and leaves idle our sense of touch and with it those formative faculties that are stimulated by it.
We touch things to assure ourselves of reality. We touch the objects of our love. We touch the things we form. Our tactile experiences are elemental.
HOW TO SUBMIT
- record your voice memo in a quiet room that does not echo. Speaking directly into the phone, instead of wearing headphones, normally produces the highest quality audio. We find this is easiest using the voice memos app on the iphone, or by downloading an audio / voice recording app on an android phone. You can also record via email, which you can learn more about here.
- email us the voice memo at [email protected]. To make sure we see it, please write ‘voice memo recording’ in the subject line. In the body of the email include your name (or indicate if you’d like to be kept anonymous), age and city you live in. If we have multiple calls for submission listed on the website, please also note which topic you’re discussing.
- listen to the pod, to see if we share your recording!
Please email us at [email protected]!