Seaming, Writing and Making Strange: Between material and text

Although prevalent in the process of artistic research, uncertainty and ambiguity seem to be most powerfully present in the transaction between material and textual elements. This article focuses on the productive aspects of ambiguity emerging in the process of translating the experience of making into a communicable language. The article derives from the author’s in-depth case study of her own practice: making seamless woven garments via peculiar hand-weaving methods. The materiality and corporeality involved in the process of research can prolong and heighten this ambiguity. In the course of the physical and emotional process of making with the hands and documenting the process, the author discovers an ‘empathetic’ relationship developing between the self and the ‘body of work’—the artefact-in-process, documented material, fragmentary texts being put together—maximizing the ‘stranger effect.’ This complicates the arrival at certainty, or settled knowledge, but is also recognized to enrich the outcome of the research. The article demonstrates the ways in which the author sought to retain, within the layout of the article and the text itself, this rich ambiguity arising between material and text