PARIP 2005

International Conference | 29 June - 03 July 2005

Gilson-Ellis: Jools | Ireland

HOW TO KNIT YOUR OWN RESEARCH:

THE KNITTING MAP

half/angel

Jools Gilson-Ellis

IMAGINE THIS

Above the earth there is a satellite which looks down at Cork and watches the movements of people and cars around the city. Down in the hub, small cameras watch the city in detail, and meteorological equipment tastes the weather. Through a strange technical alchemy, this information is transformed into a knitting pattern, which constantly shifts – some hefty cabling during rush hour; quiet lulls of stocking stitch on Sunday mornings; bobbles of blackberry stitches for the un-quotidian gatherings of Cork mortals. Down in the city, there is a quiet crypt where dozens of people knit every day for a year. They work in relay; their work moving slowly into the space between them, the strips sewn together to form a single vast document of the city. The hue of yarn shifts with the weather, and the descent of the year. There is a quiet chatter, and the occasional comings and goings of people arriving and leaving their knitting stations, like genteel relay runners. Before each of them, a digital screen details the next few lines of knitting, and they press a foot pedal to advance the pattern. During the day, people arrive to view the installation. They hear low voices, and the tapping of knitting needles. Before them this great knitted cartography, moves steadily along the floor of the crypt and begins to pile up in the half-light.

THE PROJECT

The Knitting Map was commissioned in 2003 by the Executive of the European Capital of Culture: Cork 2005. The Knitting Map is a large-scale community textile installation which involves several thousand volunteer knitters, as well as digital motion and weather-sensing technologies. The project brings together a company with ten years experience of making experimental performance and installation in theatres and galleries (half/angel), with what is fundamentally a community development project. The Knitting Map makes connections between the ordinary and the ethereal, by making information about the busyness of Cork City translate into a knitting pattern knitted by 25 people, every day for a year. The colour of yarn is generated by the weather. This abstract collaborative textile is a document of Cork’s year as City of Culture.

THE PRESENTATION

This presentation will, I’m afraid, involve you in knitting. It will cast-on cacophony as it analyses twelve different knitting performances in public spaces in Cork City during 2004. It will poeticise with the purl pack on femininity and the abundance of textile metaphors within feminist literary theory, fiction, and contemporary arts practices. It will get down to the knitty gritty of knotting community and experimental art practice. if you don’t know your bobble from your cable, this presentation will also clarify that debate. In fact, it will be rather a good pattern. Do come along.