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--- resilients:debrouillardise_et_coquetterie [2012-05-28 18:14] – 109.129.75.193
+++ resilients:debrouillardise_et_coquetterie [2013-02-08 07:52] (current) – nik
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 ==== Débrouillardise et Coquetterie ====
-notes from a [[:resilients]] residency
+notes from a [[:resilients]] residency. Coralie Stalberg, April - May 2012
-Coralie Stalberg, April - May 2012
+===PRESENTATION===
-**PRESENTATION**
 **“Débrouillardise et Coquetterie”** is a project on DIY textile practices and associated recycling strategies during a historical period characterized by a radical scarcity of material resources — the Second World War and the years right after the war. In the context of research for a resilient future that would be more sensitive and committed to sustainability, it’s quite possible that the inventive solutions imagined by all kinds of people for coping with resource shortages in their everyday realities during the war period can be inspiring for us now, and constitute a playful toolbox to experiment with…
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+===METHODOLOGY / THEORETICAL===
+at the crossroad of History, Ethnography and Textile Conservation.
+**History**, according to a Microhistory approach (‘search for large answers in small places’), also Altagsgeschichte (history from ‘below’)
-**
+  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microhistory
-METHODOLOGY / THEORETICAL PART : at the crossroad of History, Ethnography and Textile Conservation.**
+  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alltagsgeschichte
+  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annales_School
-- **History**, in a Microhistory approach (‘search for large answers in small places’), also Altagsgeschichte (history from ‘below’)
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microhistory
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alltagsgeschichte
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annales_School
 An inspiring text from Dominique Veillon : http://www.ihtp.cnrs.fr/spip.php%3Farticle240&lang=fr.html
@@ Line 36: / Line 30: @@
 http://www.osea-cite.org/history/exp_ethnography.php
-- Experimental ethnography locates the value of the anthropological intervention, however, not in the teleology of the objectified results (e.g., social change, policy/political action, or cultural revitalization), but in the process and, thus, valorizes the actual dynamics of fieldwork as the primary locus where the “real-world” relevance and significance are to be measured, evaluated, and appreciated. »
+- Experimental Ethnography locates the value of the anthropological intervention, however, not in the teleology of the objectified results (e.g., social change, policy/political action, or cultural revitalization), but in the process and, thus, valorizes the actual dynamics of fieldwork as the primary locus where the “real-world” relevance and significance are to be measured, evaluated, and appreciated. »
 -Fieldwork practices are being “recombined” to explore their utility in the recirculation of given knowledge in a relevant manner by the very activity of the exploratory bricolage.
@@ Line 42: / Line 36: @@
 -Bricolage of fieldwork in which concepts, methods, techniques from various fields of art (scenography, museumography, art installation, performance arts) are recombined with the inherited methodologies of anthropology.
 **
-°Anthropology of tranmission  / Generational Anthropology**
+°Anthropology of Transmission  / Generational Anthropology**
 Transmission is a topic of crucial importance for anthropologists. However few are the studies which make transmission their focal point, a subject for and in itself. In this paper I show how cases of transmission haunt the very foundations of our discipline and how they lie at the back of such notions as memory, re-invention and continuity. I conclude by asking how we can study ethnographically the fleeting reality that is the act of transmission. David Berliner – Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains.
@@ Line 48: / Line 42: @@
 http://www.cairn.info/revue-terrain-2010-2-page-4.htm
-**
+**Anthropology of cloth / Costume History**
-° Anthropology of cloth
-**
 « Pour une anthropologie du vêtement »  Yves Delaporte, CNRS/Musée de l’Homme
@@ Line 63: / Line 55: @@
 Out of my desire to collect stories from the past as precious fabrics….
 The most important thing that my journey through textile conservation brought me is a deepening of the understanding of the ethical dimension of my practice, throughout the whole process of the fieldwork (from the encounter to the collecting of the story - of the constitution of a living archive of stories - to the transmission of the past story and their transformation by younger generations)
-                    Some Notes on my personal methodological approach:
-For ‘Débrouillardise et Coquetterie’ I want to hybridize my ‘ethnographical – encounter’ practice with tools from textile conservation.
-At the core of my ethnographical practice lies LISTENING to the other, as a receiving and a taking care of its story. Hosting the story in my dilated present.
-Somewhere in between ethics and Sensoriality/Sensuality.
-Textile is for me intimately related to touching, I like touching with closed eyes. Feeling softness, rugosity, holes, threads.
-As listening with the closed eyes is every time again a beautiful and deep sensorial experience.
-Receiving the voices of my interviewees as a precious gift, enjoying soft, slow, fast, textured voices.
-Textile pieces and threads came up as ‘CONCRETE’ METAPHORS for the sensations i like to focus on when I interview and listen.
-Deepening the experience of touching a textile, learning the words, concepts and parameters used to analyze a piece of cloth would allows to receive more complex insights in the textures of voices given to me during the process, by analogy-thinking.
+===Methodology / Experiential (in construction)===
-Textile conservation came up as the most complete approach to analyze textile in depth, its fascinating multidisciplinarity : in between chemistry , biology, art history, craft…A lifelong learning process…
+  * Phenomenology of the encounter (cf fieldwork)
+  * Assessment of the relational complexity induced by the dynamics of the gift/countergift. (cf fieldwork, the giving/receiving of the stories from the past)
+  * Design spaces/conditions/games to foster creative engagements with the Past, as part of a Living History, (through artisanal textile workshops for older and younger generations, re enacting and reinterpreting DIY text practices from WWII)  -- intergenerational dramaturges
-If the operating concepts of textile conservation seduced me to apply them on the sensorial level of the voices of my interviewees, it now interest me in the context of D&C to apply them on the story as such. On the very words of the story to be preserved, on how the words are sewen together in sentences, on the narrative structure of the story as a whole.
-Textile conservation also attrackts me as a discipline:
+[[Some Notes on my way of hybridizing ethnography with the ethics of textile conservation]]
-Because it is a lived, bodily practice to focus on minutiae – as this focus is also central to my practice of ethnography.
+====Process====
-The infinite pleasure I have of focussing on « little » things, I am curious to apply them through textile conservation exercices.
-« Little » things are disscrete and apparently insignificant thruths, that I search for in my ethnographical explorations. ;
+===DOCUMENTING the research topic===
+Fields of interests :
-Values of the conservator that I admire:
+**Débrouillardise**
--Sticking to the concrete
--Taking utmost care of the piece you are in charge of
--Humility in the presence of the object
--Respect of the integrity of the object
--Develop a deep affinity with the object
--Commitment to extremely slow processes
--Accept that after the short moment of excitement you will commit to a long time of routine tasks, you will be bored.
--Minutiae /Precision of craftmanship.
-The textile conservator is constantly involved in finding out all kind of strategies : conservation is about inventing ways of handling difficult objects. Your ability to handle difficult situation in everyday life will help you a lot, they say in the guide for textile conservation!
+ Shortages – rationing– interlace of recyclage and DIY blossoming from bellow / impulsed from above (governmental decrees), as vehiculated by fashion magazines, advertisments, fashion magazines, tips from red cross and women syndicate magazines.
-I became more and more curious to apply metaphorically the tools for conserving pieces of cloth on micro-narratives from the past.
+Repertory of
+- Governmental decrees / rationing tickets
+-civil societies reactions : from patriotic adhesion to the expression of complaints, black market, smuggling with rationnong tickets, or finding strategies to circumvent the regulations
+- punishments in case of contravening the regulations on clothes (procès verbaux)
-FINDINGS:
-The Nature of the piece of textile is of fundamental influence on what can be at best done to preserve it. This rules inspires me ver much… but which words to define the nature of a story ?
+**Coquetterie**
-Tex Conservation nations that are ‘operative’ or applying them on ‘narratives’ :
+dignity – history of the bodies that is sensitive to a memory of emotions and affect (from proudness to shame, the hiding of precariousness) – costume as overstatement/overacting – choregraphies of the body (costume landscapes) – polarization of ideology – class – gender representation – manipulation of the women body through dressing.
-Texture of the piece of cloth : its fabric and structure.
+===Resilience===
-Characteristics :
+Moral, social and cultural resilience
-Loose patterns Zig Zag Patterns
-Unevenness in tension
-Missing parts
-Schilferend
-Scheuren
-Extreme cases of total fragmentation
-Qualities:
+serie of attitudes for protection (textile as a protective skin) and as potential for creativity comme potentialité créatrice (DIY creativity) ,
-Extensibility
-Elastic limit
-Flexibility
-Density
+development of capacities allowing for the psychic transformation of human suffering : in the playfull act of recycling/transforming clothes we find healing strategies for psyche through body dignity and ‘coquetterie’.
+Humour is said to be an important strategy for resilience, a lot of textile practices struck me by their ‘drôlerie’.
-Folds
+.1. consultation of specialized literature, articles and archives
-Size – weight – complexity
+[[contacted archive centers for resilient WWII textiles|contacted archive centers for resilient WWII textiles]]
+.2. consultation of experts:
-Fragile zones
+**Irène Guenther**
+– Specialist in modern German cultural and gender history
+http://www.uh.edu/honors/about/faculty-staff/irene-guenther.php
+ivguenth@central.uh.edu
+« Nazi ‘Chic’? Fashioning Women in the Third Reich »
+current research on the trench postcard art of German soldiers
-How much repair needed ?
+**Jonathan Walford**
-How much alteration has bien carried out ?
+Founder and Curatorial Director of Fashion History Museum of Canada, Writer
+http://www.kickshawproductions.com/
+wrote « Fourties Fashion, from Siren Suits to the New Look », 2011
+http://www.thamesandhudson.com/9780500288979.html
-The irreductible individuality of the story.
+**Dominique Veillon**
+« La mode sous l’occupation », 1990, éditions Payot.
+http://www.ihtp.cnrs.fr/spip.php%3Farticle174&lang=fr.html
+"Vivre et survivre en France 1939 - 1947", ed Payot, 1995
+interesting review: http://clio.revues.org/535?&id=535
+Hannelore Vandebroek, Nel de Mûelenaere, and Carmen Van Praet
+cf ETUDE :
+http://www.cegesoma.be/cms/rech_encours_fr.php?article=1301
-Actions / Performatives:
+Le travail des femmes dans la fabrique d'uniformes E. Reitz à Merksem, 1940-1944
--cleaning  (I don’t like the ideo of ‘cleaning’ a story though)
+Cette recherche analyse le travail des femmes dans l'industrie de guerre allemande en Belgique. La participation et l'intégration forcée de la femme belge dans l'industrie de guerre allemande pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale est un thème peu connu dans la mémoire collective. Pour combler cette lacune, Hannelore Vandebroek a, en 2007, entamé une recherche au CEGES qui sonde les expériences de travail des femmes qui ont travaillé pour l'occupant allemand. Elle se focalise principalement sur les femmes qui ont travaillé en Allemagne. En complément,  des recherches sont effectuées depuis novembre 2009 par Nel de Mûelenaere, puis par Carmen Van Praet sur le travail des femmes en Belgique même. Ces recherches ont lieu sur base du cas des ouvrières de la fabrique d'uniformes E. Reitz à Merksem.
--sewing (steunweefsel naaien) : the stories I collect from elderly spontenously receives ‘steunweefsels’ from helping people surrounding, for example from other pensionees, or from their children that actively support them in the process of remembering,reactivating by details the flow of the story, filling the holes, proposing corrections or other interpretations, raising questions, identifying contaminations from remebrances from other epochs (fusion of timelines).
+[[Sidenotes historical readings WII - Tex - Resilience|Sidenotes historical readings WII - Tex - Resilience]]
--To raise the piece of cloth/ to raise the story
+[[Communities of Resilients // from the perspective of Clothing as a resistance strategy|Communities of Resilients // from the perspective of Clothing as a resistance strategy]]
--To cover the piece of cloth/ To cover the story
--Framing, positioning the piece of cloth/ the story
--Unroll the cloth/ the story
-Pinning : involves making holes, or having marks that tends to remain
-Transfer to other contexts : the fragile condition of the story that is being displaced
+===FIELDWORK===
-Unprotected condition of the released object/story
+Senior centers interested in participation :
+  - Résidence Arcadia (elderly house Molebeek/OCMW)
+  - LDC Randstad (social restaurant for Seniors, Molenbeek)
+  - the Institut Pachéco (elderly house in 1000 Brussels),
+  - ‘Ages et Transmissions’: http://www.agesettransmissions.be/?lang=at
+  - ‘La Mémoire Vivante’ : http://www.memoirevivante.be/
-What does this displacement of concept from the conrete realm of the cloth pieces to the immaterial realm of the words and narratives mean to me, and what does they mean to you ?
+The first interviews:
+  * [[interview therese from uccle|Thérèse from Uccle]]
+  * [[interview jeanne and jacoba from pacheco|Jeanne and Jacoba from Pachéco]]
+  * [[interview jeanne van molenbeek|Jeanne van Molenbeek]]
-IN TEX CONSERVATIONS AND IN MY ETHNOGRAHICAL ENDEAVOURS, WE BOTH WORK WITH OBJECTS/STORIES AT RISK.
-At risk of dissapearing.
+Observations /ethical-conservational reflections.(des)archive the testimonies.
+(in process)
-Decaying is part of their very essence.
+====4.CASE STUDIES :: intergenerational workshops====
+(in construction)
-The responsability of our disciplines is to slow down these built in process of decay.
+====5. TOWARD A LIVING ARCHIVE====
+Search for critical/playful archive practices
-                    Some Notes on my apprenticeship in Textile Conservation:
+Philosophy
-Hands on !
+Michel Foucault « The Archeology of Knowledge » : Chapter 5: The Historical a priori and the Archive
-course followed at the Kunstakademie of Anderlecht, sectie ambachtskunsten.
-http://www.academieanderlecht.be/index.php?textiel
+Discursive practices involve systems that allow statements to emerge as 'events' and to be used or ignored as 'things.' Foucault proposes to call these systems of statements, collectively, the 'archive.' Thus, the archive is not just a collection of texts that define a culture, nor even a set of institutions that preserve texts. The archive is 'the law of what can be said' and the law of how what is said is transformed, used, preserved, etc. Thus, the archive is defined as 'the general system of the formulation and transformation of statements.'Our own, contemporary archive is impossible to describe clearly because it is the very thing that gives what we say its mode of emergence and existence. It is 'that which, outside ourselves, delimits us.'
-teacher : http://jokevandermeersch.be/
+Paul Ricoeur « Arcives, Documents, Traces »
+http://www.scribd.com/doc/77205673/Archives-Documents-Traces-Paul-Ricoeur
-Joke has an impressive knowledge in chemistry, crafts, art history and insects. She tries with a lot of patience to transmit me the basic skills of a textile conservator. The skills needed in this course are very challenging and difficult to me : patience, concentration, assiduity.
+“Any trace left by the past becomes a document for historians […], the most valuable traces are the ones that were not intended for our information.” (2006: 67)
-Something Joke says that I like very much : « Behandel elk stuk alsof het het meest waardevolle ter wereld is. »
+Giorgio Agamben « The Archive and the Testimony » in « Remnants of Auschwit », 1989
+http://www.scribd.com/doc/83522559/Giorgio-Agamben-The-Archive-and-Testimony-1
+“the archive is situated between langue, as the system of construction of possible sentences – that is, of possibilities of speaking – and the corpus that unites the set of what has been said, the things actually uttered or written.”
-I still can’t separate the Gutterman thread into its 3 consitutive threads. It’s a kind of choregraphy with the fingers you have to master, I just can’ grasp it. We have to do this because when restauring a piece we have to use the finest thread possible, so that the intervention is as invisible as possible.
-I like the cleaning ritual of textile conservation :
-Conservators have to obsessionally clean their hands before manipulating the cloth pieces, but also regularly during the process. First year students have the tendency to forget this, so part of the teaching process of Joke is to repeat it all over again…
-In the beginning of the apprenticeship we learn :
+Archive Practices in Contemporary Art
--the core (ethical) values of conservation through the little gestures of the practice, ‘richtlijnen bij het manipuleren’
+General writings :
-- how to make a ‘behandelingsrapport’ : identification form of the textile piece, description (from technique to art history background) // condition report every action that is executed on the piece of textile has to be thoroughly documented (through pictures, calques, draing, samples, formulas…) cf. ‘dagboek der werkzaamheden’
+Schaffner, Ingrid et Matthias Winzen (éditeurs). 1998. Deep storage: collecting, storing, and archiving in art. Munich ; New York : Prestel, 303 p.
+Mokhtari Sylvie (éditeur). 2004. Les Artistes contemporains et l'Archive. Interrogation sur le sens du temps et de la mémoire à l'ère de la numérisation. Rennes : Presses universitaires de Rennes, 282 p.
+Dans Archive Fever Enwezor     :   production de « contre-archives », affirmant que « les archives sont tributaires de leur fonction d’autorité manifeste en tant que source principale de vérité historique »
-- to make a support fabric and a protection fabric, to learn the most important sewing techniques in this regard
+Aby M. Warburg, «Mnemosyne-Atlas», 1924 – 1929  Mnemosyne-Atlas, Boards of the Rembrandt-Exhibition, 1926 |
+http://www.mediaartnet.org/works/mnemosyne/
+Gerhard Richter, « Atlas », 1962
+http://www.mediaartnet.org/works/atlas/images/3/
-Bibliography :
-« Textile Conservation: Advances in Practice », ed. By Frances Lennard and Patricia Ewer, 2010
+==== Interviews ====
+  * [[interview jeanne and jacoba from pacheco]]
+  * [[interview jeanne van molenbeek]]
+  * [[interview therese from uccle]]
+==== Notes on methodology====
+  * [[some_notes_on_my_personal_methodological_approach]]
+  * [[some_notes_on_my_way_of_hybridizing_ethnography_with_the_ethics_of_textile_conservation]]
-« Textile conservation and research: a documentation of the textile department on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Abegg Foundation », by Flury-Lemberg, Mechthild, 1988
+----
-« The textile conservator's manual » by Landi Sheila, Butterworths series in conservation and museology, 1985