Complications 

How can another be understood, if it’s impossible to experience their exact experience? How much of an experience of someone is an entanglement of projection and perception?

Through the long process of weaving a fragile textile, making it into a garment, unraveling and weaving it again, ‘Complications’ performs an experience of construction through behaviour. In an effort to communicate the experience of restriction and accommodation, a sensitive and constricting landscape of thread is formed alongside a soundscape of weaving.

Over four months a 36 inch wide, and 7 yard long fabric was woven. Into the weaving considered holes were formed, altering and weakening the structural integrity of the weave. The weaving was made into a dress, made by hand and from scratch, elongated hem and foot holds tangling the wearer. Spindles of silk were gathered and hung off the dress, to be unraveled, woven and intertwined in the performance.

By interlacing the auditory experience of weaving, as well as it’s physical stress, an emotional demonstration takes place allowing the viewer to see a gesture of the labor undertaken in weaving.

Accompanying the performance is a sound piece created by Maxime Gordon. All the sound used in the composition was recorded during the creation of the garment and was then mixed live during the performance. The soft thuds and groaning creeks found in the looms of the Material Arts and Design studio are carefully laced together and abstracted to create an intricate sonic layer. This auditory piece warmly guides the observer through the performance and into a deeper understanding of the labour in the construction process.