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Conference:
(This is Part 1)
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Finale

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TEXERE Conference 2002 in Lisbon
from the 6th to the 9th of March 2002

Textile Exchanges in Europe: Past, Present, Future

Conference Report by Mireille Houtzager

Day 1 - Performances - Day 2 - Day 3 - Comenius - Finale

DAY 1
Wednesday 06/ 03/ 2002
Location: Auditorium of the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon

9.45 – Opening of the Conference by the Chair of the Texere Association, Ine Stolwijk.

Ine Stolwijk welcomed all the participants of this conference.

For the participants less familiar to TEXERE, she explained what the association means and stands for. Since 1990 the TEXERE group of (mostly) ladies, textile teachers from all over Europe, organised Meetings and Conferences, year after year without any help or funding. However in 1998 we became an official Association: Textile Education and Research in Europe (TEXERE), so due to the annual fees things can be better organised since then.
"To organise a Conference means a lot of work though, therefore it is always very difficult to find a place and a person who accepts this terrible task."
Ine thanked Nazaré Ferreira and Hugo Ferrão for all their hard work to prepare and to organise this conference. She also expressed her gratitude towards the Faculty of Fine Arts and to the Arts School António Arroio for giving rooms at our disposal.

She ended by declaring: "We are very happy and grateful that we may participate in this conference. We are looking forward to interesting days, to listen to interesting lectures, to visit this wonderful town and its museums. Meetings like these are extremely important for Textile Education and textile Art which in most countries have to struggle for recognition. By the exchange of knowledge and information we certainly feel strengthened to continue in our work for another fruitful year. I wish success to this Conference and a good time to all participants!"

  PANEL: TEXTILE RESEARCH - Lectures
Co-ordinator: Anna Isabel Gonçalves – Graduate in Plastic Arts/ Painting (FBA-UL)

Hugo Ferrão - painter, auxiliary professor at the Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa (FBA-UL), Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon. Master in Educational Communication Multimedia, Portugal.

“Pre-Industrial Textile Drawing: the Flax Cycle in the village of Limoes, or the Lost Paradise”
In the Eighties of the Twentieth Century, a fieldwork began, integrated in an artistic investigation project in the domain of the so called 'Flax Cycle'.
The present investigation project is developed at the Faculty of fine Arts, University of Lisbon, in the Tapestry Course and it is entitled: 'Tapestry – Matter and Materials, Textile Drawing'. […]
Hugo illustrated his interesting story of the still pre-industrial, mythical times in the Tras-os-Monte region by showing us wonderful slides of the landscape and villages, the weavers and the weavings. Beautiful weavings from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, locally inspired, with birds, deer, sheep, flowers, fruits and other elements conceived by the weaver to embellish the piece.
The original 'strokes' for the weaving of flax are kept in paper rolls of which copies are handmade on tracing paper, without the use of a grid, which causes adulterations, by simplification in the more ancient originals. There is also the possibility of 'taking' the 'stroke' from the natural, using a woven piece and draw its 'strokes' from it directly.
The recovery of 'strokes' and their cataloguing is an impassioned and simultaneously lengthy investigation. There continues to be great reservations as to the possibility of copy, and disclosure, due to this secretive attitude, understandable due to the context in which it is placed. For the weavers there is a risk of losing the true 'maps of the imaginary', as well as the loss of a rurality ever more close to a 'lost Paradise'. There are no 'paradises' that are inevitably 'lost' as long as we will generate a strong will by contributing to signify existence itself, humanising it.
  Carmen Romeo Dal Bò – teacher at the Istituto Statale D'Arte Giovanni Sello, Udine, Italy.
“The Friuli-Venezia-Giulia Region Traditional Folk Costumes”
A scientific study programme on the typical folk costume of the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia Region, located in the north-eastern area of Italy, was begun at the end of the thirties. The contribution in this field made by Lea D'Orlandi and Gaetano Perusini was very significant at that time, because they adopted a research method, which was considered particularly innovative for the age.
The folk costume history was build by them through the analyses and the comparison of different sources of documentation, for example: clothes and fabrics coming from the 18-th, 19-th and the beginning of the 20-th Century; portraits; wills; engravings, photographs and oral information. As a result of this study, a sort of 'map' of the local traditional costumes was created. […] Once again it was clear that folk costumes are the result of the local traditions, which can be interpreted from many points of view as a visual 'language' made up of signs and symbols. Young women, who dedicated many hours to these kinds of activities, often made these garments. The high level of hand made production, particularly of the decorations (lace, embroidery, print, woven material) is amazing. While they are working, they used to sing songs and dreamed their future after their weddings. We are convinced that this wonderful heritage should be used more in a didactic context, because it is possible to learn a lot from it and to understand more about the roots of tradition.
Carmen illustrated her lecture by showing a wonderful series of slides.
[This same afternoon, Carmen showed us what such a 'didactic context' could mean: the contributions of her school to the Comenius project happened to be just the right example!]
  Marie Koch – pro-rector at the Teachers College of Arts & Crafts, Kerteminde, Denmark
“Hands on Craft”
Marie Koch put her lecture more or less in the form of a Manifesto, made up of statements:
1 - I want to discuss why craft is so important in a world where cyberspace and biotechnology win in the hierarchy of importance.
2 - I want to update the work done by our hands.

[…] “We must develop a vision now, in the beginning of this Third Millennium. […]
I learned my skills through dialoguing with my master: I tried to repeat her doings, and my success could be measured in the product I produced. I did what I did because it was a normal thing to produce your own products! Going back in generations, I just have to jump back to the times when my grandmother lived, realising that her need to produce was perhaps more obvious. My own needs today aren't clear anymore: our culture has grown in a direction where handmade products have very little value. So I have to ask myself: why do I still work in a field that has no cultural necessity anymore? […]
In our culture we think in contrasts, dichotomies: we understand peace only if we relate it to war, love related to hate; black versus white, good versus bad, and mind versus body. […]
In the myth of the good craft we relate the hands to the creation. Women often do hand made products, especially textile craft products. These products are related to the female body, meaning: craft in the western culture has a very low status.
The design of a product either relates to tradition, in a wish to renew tradition or reformulates the product. Today it is extraordinary to see the disrespect in the attitude of many young designers towards the material, the form and the consumer. It is a refreshing and positive disrespect that actually questions tradition and the great myth of craft in a daring way. This disrespect could be the entrance to a shift of the myth, we find the same signs of change in the myth of Art too.
Is this positive disrespect to be shown in a virtual world? If the future belongs to cyberspace and biotechnology, where do we situate the future of craft? We all will agree to the fact that production and process have always been related to the mind as well as to the hands, the body. But handwork is not brainwork. So we must reformulate what craft is up to, and this reformulation includes mind and body: they are unified. We must be strong enough to keep that point of view: we must put our hands on craft and think through our hands on craft. Craft is connected to the senses, to all known human senses. One of the reasons craft survives in the Third Millennium is because of the fact that our values are connected to senses, and life is without value if we do not live through our senses, old ones as well as new ones. So, the progress of (the new) technology have to be reorganised towards craft and conversely!
  Heidi Lerche-Renn – Akademische Oberrätin at the University of Cologne, department of Textile Design and Research, Seminar of Art and its Theory; Germany.
“Textile Networks as an Organisation and Structure of the Mind”
Heidi's lecture was no 'lecture' in the ordinary sense, but more a presented 'work of art' in the form of a Power-point presentation. There is no use of telling what we saw, without showing the actual images to illustrate it.
An interesting and nice coincidence was the fact that this presentation seemed to me almost like an illustration of the Manifesto Marie Koch gave us earlier.
  António Sá – writer, Portugal
“Seduction and Comfort. Gender Work in Literature”
We can find allusions to the work on silk and the wear of certain pieces of clothing in some songs of the Galicean Portuguese troubadours. And, reading those verses (whose musical notations have never been found), we try to interpret the sense of the allusions, although they are rare, which seem to be affected with a certain mystery. However there is perhaps no mystery, …
Noble feminine virtues in the Galicean Portuguese lyrics: the mildness, the patience and the fidelity of a lady spinning and embroidering; just to give you some examples:
[…] “The beautiful one was sited, embroidering the silk, raising her beautiful voice very softly, singing love songs”. “By the crucified God, milady. I know that you have a great sorrow so you sing love songs so well” […]
In another song the maiden is going to bath in the river: […] “If today my friend knew, he would go with me: I'm going to bathe in the river. Who would tell him that I have already taken the mantle: I'm going to bathe in the river” […]
In yet another one she is washing and drying shirts: […] “The beloved one got up, the white dawn raised, and she is going to wash shirts beside the river: she goes, the white one, to wash in the white dawn”. […] “The wind took them; the white dawn raised; the white young maiden got enraged beside the river: she goes, the white one, to wash in the white dawn” […].
António Sá illustrated his poetical journey by showing us slides: beautiful illuminations from ancient manuscripts.
  Lidija Kolovrat – Fashion and Textile designer
“Istinizam” – Fashion Show and video installation
A very strong and lively lady commented expressively to her own works she showed on video: an amazing and very interesting contribution to fashion, something in between a choreography for a ballet and a catwalk fashion presentation at the same time; bordering art.
Note of the writer:
To me it seemed a brand new, contemporary and very poetic illustration of the medieval verses António Sá introduced to us earlier. Actually it was also about gender behaviour: the male peacock waving his impressive feathers, answered by the attempts of the female hens to fly away, or just to seduce the male in their own ways?
  Day 1 - Afternoon Programme   >>
Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 3: Comenius - Finale
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© texere Textile Education and Research in Europe
July, 2002
Design: Hannelore Kapuste