23.5.20 Reflections on Self: Body cocoon
Self and other syncretises two seemingly disparate aspects of my practice, making and facilitating. My ‘Self’ becomes a wearable, knitted sculpture, yet also a series of photos of the same, unworn, in my domestic spaces; embodied, yet abject. The ‘Other’ becomes the stranger, the passer-by, who maybe chooses to also become a participant. Between the two, in these strange times, is a very real and rational contamination anxiety, a discomforting threshold between self and other.
Physical description of Body cocoon
Body cocoon is hand knitted in multiple fleshy tones, my fleshy tones, lots of pinks and tans. It’s knitted as a variable curving series of stripes, as a stream of consciousness, with double Cascade 220 yarn on multiple circular needles. It’s pure wool so I could potentially felt it at a late date if I wanted to. I knitted it for me so when I wear it, it shrouds my form, covering me from head to toe; hanging on a meat hook, the knitting measures 188 x 38 x 35 cm, with up to an extra 112cm length for the longest hanging threads. It took me 38 days to knit.
Knitting as comfort
Knitting has connections with domesticity, garments, comfort and the body. I knew that I wanted to knit a cocoon for myself as soon as I realised that this crisis was going to have such a radical impact on the world as we knew it. The process of knitting is also very calming. I’ve written more about this here.
Private/public
Normally I do most of my knitting in public, around other people; Body cocoon has been exclusively knitted privately, in my home and garden. Normally I knit my wearable sculptures and invite other people to wear them; Body cocoon has only been worn by me. It feels much more intimate than my other knitted Living sculptures. Wearing it, it becomes more intimate still, my personal space, a marker of the boundary between my self and the other.
Knitting and embodiment
Knitting, the verb, is like breathing, connecting my body with my mind through the haptic nature of making and materials. Neurologist Frank Wilson (1999, p8) describes these complex links between the actions of the hand and the development of thought. He maintains that ‘the curious, exploratory, improvisational interaction of the hand with objects…gives rise to what we call “ideas”’.
Body cocoon feels as if it’s part of me, an extension of my body. During the time I knitted it, I carried it with me wherever I was in the house and garden; the physicality of the knitting process means that the mark of my hand is evident, and also traces of me, my actions and the places I have inhabited – dirt, sweat, my hair, spilled drinks, leaves from the garden, the faint scent of suncream – it embodies me. The series of images of the empty form inhibiting those private spaces in my house is a form of documentation of my knitting process. It becomes part of me.
Knitting and flow
The process of knitting of makes me happy. Knitting alone, or very privately, as I have done for Body cocoon, I quickly enter that wondrous meditative state, Csikzsentmihalyi’s state of flow. Time flies, but also, my mind finds a deep and different way of thinking. Occupational therapist, Betsan Corkhill (2014, p30) calls knitting a ‘bilateral, rhythmic, psychosocial intervention.’ Her research into its therapeutic benefits also provides evidence that knitting can ‘change thought patterns’ (ibid. p72). It certainly helped me to cope with those early difficult roller coaster days – fear, grief, anxiety - of the Covid-19 lockdown. Flow with its links to automaticity, time and the unconscious has been a big part of my research.
Knitting and time
Knitting, as repetitive, slow labour can mark time. It’s incremental, so each stitch marks a moment in time, but also, recording the durational nature of knitting, the way it grows over time, clearly documents time too. I began knitting Body cocoon a couple of days after self-isolating, photographing its progress every day to document that passage of time. For the first few days there was no one else here to take photos, but after that I began to wear my knitting, in the garden, at a certain time every day and my partner, Dave, would document the moment. It became an important ritual each day.
SIoppy knitting
I had knitted Body cocoon to accentuate the sloppy knitting that I discuss here so I took photos of me wearing it the ‘right’ way out and also inside out. As part of this knitting technique that I’m investigating, I pull through the knotted ends, where I’ve joined the yarn, to the ‘right’ side, so that the outside of the piece is ‘hairy’. It looks untidy and unfinished. The inside or ‘wrong’ side is much hairier, though, as I also leave long, trailing loose ends. These are a by-product of knitting with multiple colours and, in conventional knitting they are cut and stitched into the reverse of the knitting so that they disappear. Leaving them subverts the expectation that knitting should be perfect and finished. It definitely looks like sloppy knitting! It also makes the piece very difficult to wear as the yarn gets tangled, so it becomes non functional as well. There’s a sense of chaos about the way it looks too, a blurring of lines. Again, conventional knitting is usually ordered, so this disorder further subverts the gendered expectations of knitting. This chaos and disorder make connections again with Bataille’s formlessness, Douglas’ ‘matter out of place’ and Faiers’ ‘catastrophic knitting’.
Colour and meaning
I think the colour palette I’ve chosen makes the work seem more benign, possibly, than I intended it to. If the colours were different maybe there would be an abject response to the hairiness. I’m not sure how people will respond to this work, actually. I posted a few photos on social media in the very early days and one person said ‘Lovely colours!’ My intention was for it to be uncomfortable so I’d chosen flesh colours, lots of tans, but I think in the end I veered towards all those pinks instead, possibly because they make me feel better; tan definitely makes me feel worse.
Wearing the unwearable
Wearing it became harder and harder as the days went by. I’d knitted a large hole at the front and decided that that would be the way to get in to it, ultimately, so I decreased the knitting around my legs and ankles. It was very hard to get into it when it was finished, mostly because of all the hanging threads. I’m pleased with it though. I like the way that it shrouds me, although I’d prefer it not to have that opening. Maybe I’ll wear it the other way round instead? I’ve started my next Body cocoon already, and that has a different form.
Knitting and performance
I’m a reluctant performer, but I decided to do @rupidh’s #participationinisolation performance a day challenge in April. As part of that, I did 2 ‘performances’ as videos of me wearing Body cocoon, moving in different ways. This one is me twirling I think the idea of it is interesting, especially this one where I’m trying to escape! Maybe I need to revisit that too. They’re both just over 10 seconds.
Apart from that, for some reason, I’ve kept Body cocoon very quiet. It really has become an extremely private work.
Hanging for a photoshoot
I set up a makeshift photo studio so that I could take some more traditional photos of the sculpture. It is curious to see how it somehow elevates a piece of art to photograph it against a white background. It certainly changes it. I decided to hang it from a meat hook, as gravity creates a different form. It makes it much taller than me, and much thinner! I photographed it right side out then wrong side. It’s interesting to compare the two. I often find that taking photos is a very useful way of seeing, and obviously I had been either modelling this piece until now, or knitting it. It’s very different without me in it. It definitely has a presence because of its scale and the colours are truly lovely. I had expected it to be more discomforting, especially hanging, but actually it looks more as if it’s standing. Maybe if it were suspended at a greater height it would look more abject. I think the cascading long threads are especially alluring… as the colours blend in different ways to the ways they blend when they’re knitted. Yet another change in control?
Physical becomes virtual
An interesting thing about submitting this piece virtually is that I can show the ‘right’ side at the same time as the ‘wrong’ side. However, it is impossible to also communicate its physical presence, tactility, surface, even true colour in a photo; and I certainly can’t invite anyone else to wear it, sadly. That does makes it even more personal though. I am the only person who’s worn it so far. I did suggest that Dave wore it, so I could take photos, but he wasn’t keen for some reason.
It’s also been hard to decide which aspects of the process and product of Body cocoon I should endeavour to submit for assessment. It feels as if it’s had so many factes over the time I’ve been making and documenting it – my comfort, a garment, a gatherer of data, an object apart from me, an empty replacement for me, a vehicle for performance, humour, abjection, the backdrop to my time in isolation. I have chosen to submit just 2 of those aspects – the photos of the unworn sculpture as self portraits and the narrative of its progress through daily photos, as I feel they capture best the much deeper introspection that working in isolation has brought to my knitting practice.
Emptiness and the abject
I decided to take photos of Body cocoon around my house and garden in the spaces that I inhabit. I think the photos are a very poignant and sometimes quite funny take on isolation and personal space. I feel a little awkward about making so much of my house more public than is comfortable, but that is definitely the point. Situating art in unexpected places can lead to feelings of unease, according to Claire Bishop, and that is what I’m doing. If I’d had other options, I certainly wouldn’t have used my home for a photoshoot.
Making public things that are normally private
Although I make certain things very public through my art, they are carefully proscribed by me. I like to keep many things very private. And my home is normally one of them. I recognise that this blurring of public and private spheres is another symptom of the pandemic, as we’re all having to have meetings via video call, revealing aspects of our private lives to full view through a screen. This, I suppose is an extension of that. The pandemic seems to have erased certain boundaries between what is private and what is public yet created new ones by forcing us to live much more privately than many of us would choose.
Knitting’s site responsiveness
Knitting is literally so flexible that it responds in many ways to many situations. It’s the ultimate for site responsiveness. When worn it takes on my form, its embodied; hanging from a meat hook, it stretches to the ground, elongated; empty, inhabiting the spaces that I normally inhabit, it’s a shapeshifter, slumping, draping, sitting, hanging. It speaks of absence and the abject, yet I think these photos might also make the viewer laugh. I hope so. I relish a range of conflicting response to my work.
Echoing crochet artist Olek, for me, ‘life…and art are inseparable’ (in Vannier, 2018, p91) and like artist Orly Genger, who constructs large scale hand knotted installations, I feel that ‘if I could put my body into my work that would be the ultimate’ (in Kino, 2013).
Drenth, A. (2020) Jung, Bergson and the Unconscious mind Available at: https://personalityjunkie.com/01/jung-bergson-creativity-unconscious-mind/ (Accessed: 13 May 2020)
Felluga, D. (2011) ‘Modules on Kristeva: On the Abject’ in Introductory Guide to Critical Theory Available at: https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabject.html (Accessed 5 May 2020)
Kino, C. (2013) The rope wrangler, ideas unfurling 1 May Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/arts/design/orly-genger-in-madison-square-park.html (Accessed 20 December 2019)
Vannier, C., (2018) Unravelled: Contemporary Knit Art. London: Thames and Hudson
Self and other syncretises two seemingly disparate aspects of my practice, making and facilitating. My ‘Self’ becomes a wearable, knitted sculpture, yet also a series of photos of the same, unworn, in my domestic spaces; embodied, yet abject. The ‘Other’ becomes the stranger, the passer-by, who maybe chooses to also become a participant. Between the two, in these strange times, is a very real and rational contamination anxiety, a discomforting threshold between self and other.
Physical description of Body cocoon
Body cocoon is hand knitted in multiple fleshy tones, my fleshy tones, lots of pinks and tans. It’s knitted as a variable curving series of stripes, as a stream of consciousness, with double Cascade 220 yarn on multiple circular needles. It’s pure wool so I could potentially felt it at a late date if I wanted to. I knitted it for me so when I wear it, it shrouds my form, covering me from head to toe; hanging on a meat hook, the knitting measures 188 x 38 x 35 cm, with up to an extra 112cm length for the longest hanging threads. It took me 38 days to knit.
Knitting as comfort
Knitting has connections with domesticity, garments, comfort and the body. I knew that I wanted to knit a cocoon for myself as soon as I realised that this crisis was going to have such a radical impact on the world as we knew it. The process of knitting is also very calming. I’ve written more about this here.
Private/public
Normally I do most of my knitting in public, around other people; Body cocoon has been exclusively knitted privately, in my home and garden. Normally I knit my wearable sculptures and invite other people to wear them; Body cocoon has only been worn by me. It feels much more intimate than my other knitted Living sculptures. Wearing it, it becomes more intimate still, my personal space, a marker of the boundary between my self and the other.
Knitting and embodiment
Knitting, the verb, is like breathing, connecting my body with my mind through the haptic nature of making and materials. Neurologist Frank Wilson (1999, p8) describes these complex links between the actions of the hand and the development of thought. He maintains that ‘the curious, exploratory, improvisational interaction of the hand with objects…gives rise to what we call “ideas”’.
Body cocoon feels as if it’s part of me, an extension of my body. During the time I knitted it, I carried it with me wherever I was in the house and garden; the physicality of the knitting process means that the mark of my hand is evident, and also traces of me, my actions and the places I have inhabited – dirt, sweat, my hair, spilled drinks, leaves from the garden, the faint scent of suncream – it embodies me. The series of images of the empty form inhibiting those private spaces in my house is a form of documentation of my knitting process. It becomes part of me.
Knitting and flow
The process of knitting of makes me happy. Knitting alone, or very privately, as I have done for Body cocoon, I quickly enter that wondrous meditative state, Csikzsentmihalyi’s state of flow. Time flies, but also, my mind finds a deep and different way of thinking. Occupational therapist, Betsan Corkhill (2014, p30) calls knitting a ‘bilateral, rhythmic, psychosocial intervention.’ Her research into its therapeutic benefits also provides evidence that knitting can ‘change thought patterns’ (ibid. p72). It certainly helped me to cope with those early difficult roller coaster days – fear, grief, anxiety - of the Covid-19 lockdown. Flow with its links to automaticity, time and the unconscious has been a big part of my research.
Knitting and time
Knitting, as repetitive, slow labour can mark time. It’s incremental, so each stitch marks a moment in time, but also, recording the durational nature of knitting, the way it grows over time, clearly documents time too. I began knitting Body cocoon a couple of days after self-isolating, photographing its progress every day to document that passage of time. For the first few days there was no one else here to take photos, but after that I began to wear my knitting, in the garden, at a certain time every day and my partner, Dave, would document the moment. It became an important ritual each day.
SIoppy knitting
I had knitted Body cocoon to accentuate the sloppy knitting that I discuss here so I took photos of me wearing it the ‘right’ way out and also inside out. As part of this knitting technique that I’m investigating, I pull through the knotted ends, where I’ve joined the yarn, to the ‘right’ side, so that the outside of the piece is ‘hairy’. It looks untidy and unfinished. The inside or ‘wrong’ side is much hairier, though, as I also leave long, trailing loose ends. These are a by-product of knitting with multiple colours and, in conventional knitting they are cut and stitched into the reverse of the knitting so that they disappear. Leaving them subverts the expectation that knitting should be perfect and finished. It definitely looks like sloppy knitting! It also makes the piece very difficult to wear as the yarn gets tangled, so it becomes non functional as well. There’s a sense of chaos about the way it looks too, a blurring of lines. Again, conventional knitting is usually ordered, so this disorder further subverts the gendered expectations of knitting. This chaos and disorder make connections again with Bataille’s formlessness, Douglas’ ‘matter out of place’ and Faiers’ ‘catastrophic knitting’.
Colour and meaning
I think the colour palette I’ve chosen makes the work seem more benign, possibly, than I intended it to. If the colours were different maybe there would be an abject response to the hairiness. I’m not sure how people will respond to this work, actually. I posted a few photos on social media in the very early days and one person said ‘Lovely colours!’ My intention was for it to be uncomfortable so I’d chosen flesh colours, lots of tans, but I think in the end I veered towards all those pinks instead, possibly because they make me feel better; tan definitely makes me feel worse.
Wearing the unwearable
Wearing it became harder and harder as the days went by. I’d knitted a large hole at the front and decided that that would be the way to get in to it, ultimately, so I decreased the knitting around my legs and ankles. It was very hard to get into it when it was finished, mostly because of all the hanging threads. I’m pleased with it though. I like the way that it shrouds me, although I’d prefer it not to have that opening. Maybe I’ll wear it the other way round instead? I’ve started my next Body cocoon already, and that has a different form.
Knitting and performance
I’m a reluctant performer, but I decided to do @rupidh’s #participationinisolation performance a day challenge in April. As part of that, I did 2 ‘performances’ as videos of me wearing Body cocoon, moving in different ways. This one is me twirling I think the idea of it is interesting, especially this one where I’m trying to escape! Maybe I need to revisit that too. They’re both just over 10 seconds.
Apart from that, for some reason, I’ve kept Body cocoon very quiet. It really has become an extremely private work.
Hanging for a photoshoot
I set up a makeshift photo studio so that I could take some more traditional photos of the sculpture. It is curious to see how it somehow elevates a piece of art to photograph it against a white background. It certainly changes it. I decided to hang it from a meat hook, as gravity creates a different form. It makes it much taller than me, and much thinner! I photographed it right side out then wrong side. It’s interesting to compare the two. I often find that taking photos is a very useful way of seeing, and obviously I had been either modelling this piece until now, or knitting it. It’s very different without me in it. It definitely has a presence because of its scale and the colours are truly lovely. I had expected it to be more discomforting, especially hanging, but actually it looks more as if it’s standing. Maybe if it were suspended at a greater height it would look more abject. I think the cascading long threads are especially alluring… as the colours blend in different ways to the ways they blend when they’re knitted. Yet another change in control?
Physical becomes virtual
An interesting thing about submitting this piece virtually is that I can show the ‘right’ side at the same time as the ‘wrong’ side. However, it is impossible to also communicate its physical presence, tactility, surface, even true colour in a photo; and I certainly can’t invite anyone else to wear it, sadly. That does makes it even more personal though. I am the only person who’s worn it so far. I did suggest that Dave wore it, so I could take photos, but he wasn’t keen for some reason.
It’s also been hard to decide which aspects of the process and product of Body cocoon I should endeavour to submit for assessment. It feels as if it’s had so many factes over the time I’ve been making and documenting it – my comfort, a garment, a gatherer of data, an object apart from me, an empty replacement for me, a vehicle for performance, humour, abjection, the backdrop to my time in isolation. I have chosen to submit just 2 of those aspects – the photos of the unworn sculpture as self portraits and the narrative of its progress through daily photos, as I feel they capture best the much deeper introspection that working in isolation has brought to my knitting practice.
Emptiness and the abject
I decided to take photos of Body cocoon around my house and garden in the spaces that I inhabit. I think the photos are a very poignant and sometimes quite funny take on isolation and personal space. I feel a little awkward about making so much of my house more public than is comfortable, but that is definitely the point. Situating art in unexpected places can lead to feelings of unease, according to Claire Bishop, and that is what I’m doing. If I’d had other options, I certainly wouldn’t have used my home for a photoshoot.
Making public things that are normally private
Although I make certain things very public through my art, they are carefully proscribed by me. I like to keep many things very private. And my home is normally one of them. I recognise that this blurring of public and private spheres is another symptom of the pandemic, as we’re all having to have meetings via video call, revealing aspects of our private lives to full view through a screen. This, I suppose is an extension of that. The pandemic seems to have erased certain boundaries between what is private and what is public yet created new ones by forcing us to live much more privately than many of us would choose.
Knitting’s site responsiveness
Knitting is literally so flexible that it responds in many ways to many situations. It’s the ultimate for site responsiveness. When worn it takes on my form, its embodied; hanging from a meat hook, it stretches to the ground, elongated; empty, inhabiting the spaces that I normally inhabit, it’s a shapeshifter, slumping, draping, sitting, hanging. It speaks of absence and the abject, yet I think these photos might also make the viewer laugh. I hope so. I relish a range of conflicting response to my work.
Echoing crochet artist Olek, for me, ‘life…and art are inseparable’ (in Vannier, 2018, p91) and like artist Orly Genger, who constructs large scale hand knotted installations, I feel that ‘if I could put my body into my work that would be the ultimate’ (in Kino, 2013).
Drenth, A. (2020) Jung, Bergson and the Unconscious mind Available at: https://personalityjunkie.com/01/jung-bergson-creativity-unconscious-mind/ (Accessed: 13 May 2020)
Felluga, D. (2011) ‘Modules on Kristeva: On the Abject’ in Introductory Guide to Critical Theory Available at: https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabject.html (Accessed 5 May 2020)
Kino, C. (2013) The rope wrangler, ideas unfurling 1 May Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/arts/design/orly-genger-in-madison-square-park.html (Accessed 20 December 2019)
Vannier, C., (2018) Unravelled: Contemporary Knit Art. London: Thames and Hudson
