Looming

Looming is a beginner's guide to weaving with affordable materials. The draft will be part of a publication with the proceedings of the 2018 Trojan Horse Summer School in Finland.

The theme of the school was “The Choreography of Money” and the readings and workshops circulated around the topics of money, value, and validation. The learning format was slightly different than traditional summer schools. First, we were hosted on a secluded island in south Finland that works as a camping site. Each participant was also a tutor and organized a workshop to share something with the others. Doing dishes, organizing evening snacks on the bonfire, taking walks in the forest and going to the sauna every night were some of the activities of our learning plan.

My workshop incorporated discussions from previous workshops, reading circles, and sauna talks. It was held on the top of a large rock that faced the sea and had the best view I found in the Island. All the materials were upcycled (aka trash), locally sourced from the island or cost very little. I opened the discussion by talking about the struggles of sourcing the materials and the labor-intensive process of hand-making each loom and tools for 20 people. From my almost silly struggles, we had conversations about weaving and its relation to female labor and culture, craft business as a tool for female empowerment, the implicit values of things we buy and our tendency to ignore them. Most participants continued working on their weavings during the rest of the week, taught each other weaving tricks and continued discussions related to value and meaning in buying commercial products.

My work with Trojan Horse uses exploration and experimentation as a tool in research and a format to discover alternative ways of learning.

You can read my draft for the publication here.