Moda Documenta: Museu, Memória e Design – 2015
TEXTS, TEXTILES AND GENEALOGIES – REFLECTIONS ON A CREATIVE PROCESS
Profa. Me. Regina Barbosa1 - Universidade Anhembi Morumbi
Abstract: The following textual piece presents the basis of a project named until now as “Texts,
textiles and genealogies – take me home”, in which is explored a creative process that has been
multiplicating itself, in reflections and plastic possibilities, through the investigation of the
proximities between the composition of the text and the textile. It was adopted as a title one of
John Denver’s songs in which is purposed to go back to a place of belonging, reflecting the
relation with the genealogies, once it is perceived – to value this particular process – the
connections among text, textile and dressing intrinsically linked to memory and living.
Keywords: Text; Textile; Memory
Introducing the line of thinking
A única certeza que eu seguro nas mãos
é a linha que costuro, que me liga
umbilicalmente ao mundo. Me interessa
aprimorar a ótica tátil. Olho que mergulha
o mundo com o corpo todo.2
Edith Derdyk – Linha de Costura
To write is to weave texts.
It is not by chance that the words used to decribe the activities of building textiles and
texts are similar so many times. The plots/wooves, knots, lines and points are just a few of the
proximities that are possible to be found.
Stories and history are told in and by textiles.
Professor of the Fashion Business and Fashion Design programs at Universidade Anhembi Morumbi, graduated on
Fashion Business and Design and has a Master Degree on Design at Universidade Anhembi Morumbi. Teaches
Visual Language, Drawing and Fashion Illustration, also tutoring students through their final projects (TCC). At postgraduation program, teaches Creative Processes.
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“The only certainty that I hold in my hands is the line that I use to sew, that attaches me from my umbilicus to the
world. It interests me to improve the tactile optic. Eye that plunges the world with a full body” – Translated by the
author.
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Moda Documenta: Museu, Memória e Design – 2015
I remember of reading, while growing up, more than one fable in which weaving or
embroidery were made to unleash mysteries or made memories perpetual. But the learning
process of embroidery, sew, weave are also filled of words. Within time, these words that guide
the learning of those activities start to bring up experiences and memories, some gossip, a few
secrets. Secrets that could be a “trick” about building that particular textile, a way to make it
easier, or that detail that will make it work, that will make it seem right, the family secret, that
small gesture that solves the plot.
Besides the child’s fables, I have been, through the years, collecting texts about textiles
or about dressing, that I named textile texts. Some of them are part of lyrics, some were found in
books, and, sometimes, I find them in magazines.
Some of those texts are not even texts, actually. A few of them were found in the
archetypes arising from the myths – would that be the order? – and a lot of them were born from
a lifetime with textiles and working/building textiles. They are inheritance, which came from
stories told and/or lived and needed to become text in an exercise of interpretation. This
inheritance has it’s own rhythm. It is filled with voids and pauses. It is text, but it is also textile.
Because it is woven together, because each story can entangle itself to another and show in the
end – as it is – the fabric of the life of each and every one of us.
So, besides collecting the texts of many authors3, I also have been registering in a more
or less poetic writing, about those clothes and fabrics, perceiving that fabrics, those things that we
wear, the objects close to our bodies can present theirselves as beholders of stories. Beholders
of time. A time of learning, of making, of being, that can’t always be quantifiable. That is why I
choose the “slow”, to talk about the experience of a sensible dressing and in first person.
Drawing an analogy between the presented sources, I offer myself in lines and threads –
of thought, but not only – understanding that, whenever we approach these thread and kniting
shops’ counter, what is found there is not sold in rigid bars. This material is sold in rolls and
hanks, everything that, in a careless pull, tend to get all tangled up. And, the perception of this
entangling will take us through the text.
Such as Stalybrass (2008), Derdyk (1997), Bonder (2008), Kandinsky (1997), Preciosa (2010), Oz (1999), among
others.
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Moda Documenta: Museu, Memória e Design – 2015
Line(s) of Life – to realize a creative proccess
Agora imagine chegar a Sanliurfa,
desfazer a pequena mala, minha tímida
proteção social e me surpreender: onde
estão as minhas calças?
Eu estava em terra estrangeira, em meio
a idiomas estranhos, costumes exóticos,
num grupo formado por desconhecidos só tinha aquela pequena mala para me
proteger. E, naquele lugar, meu "dinheiro
de plástico" não valia calças. (...)4
Rab. Nilton Bonder – Tirando Os Sapatos:
o caminho de Abraão, um caminho para o
outro
When I began, effectively, the present project, I did not intend to, at the same time, live it
actively. I was, actually, thinking about creating parallels and discuss the praxis of normatization e
domestication of creative processes, by investigating the effectivity of applying an orthogonal and
systemic formula to teach how to create.
While I was immerse in this reflexion, I found myself facing an applicable method that
really worked, but, as it was presented as an axis, an straight line, could not respect the
organicity that is so needed to welcome the deviations, insurgencies, sensations and experiences
that could and should emerge. Something there was causing discomfort to me. It seems that the
procedure in straight line was, somehow, an aberration. I found out that the ordination point, that
thing that could justify the process, was permeated by the creative individual’s repertoire, that
immense web of connections that could often be described as less than logical. All in all, such
web presents itself as an extremely competent tool to create subtle and peculiar orders, able to
purpose very unique results.
As formas de percepção não são gratuitas nem os relacionamentos se
estabelecem ao acaso. Ainda que talvez a lógica de seu desdobramento
nos escape, sentimos perfeitamente que há um nexo. (...) ao relacionarmos
os fenômenos nós os ligamos entre si e os vinculamos a nós mesmos.
“Now, imagine yourself getting to Sanliurfa, undoing your little piece of luggage, my timid social protection and get
this surprise: where are my pants?
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I was in a foreign land, among strange languages and exotic habits, in a group formed by people I did not know – I
only had that small bag to protect myself. And, in that place, my “plastic money” could not by pants (…)” – Translated
by the author.
ISSN: 2358-5269 Ano II - Nº 1 - Maio de 2015
Moda Documenta: Museu, Memória e Design – 2015
Sem nos darmos conta, nós os orientamos de acordo com expectativas,
desejos, medos, e, sobretudo, de acordo com uma atitude de nosso ser
mais íntimo, uma ordenação interior. (OSTROWER, 1987, p. 9)5
Thereby, illustrate the process became a necessity. I went back to a few old projects of
mine, and met my own processes and repertoire, to, finally, decide to materialize it all as a
discursive and plastic construction named, at this very moment, Take Me Home.
It was elected the line for this process. It appears as a visual language element, with all
its definitions and unfoldings, the drawing line, that I always adopted as “the” expressive
instrument, the writing line, that one in which the writing is placed, but that is also used to
embroider the words on paper, creating full and voids, the spaces in between, that allows the
reader to breathe and interpretate. And the textile lines, of sewing, of weaving, of weft and warp,
entangled lines. Lines that create surfaces and lines that will be taking surfaces over.
Thus, I desire to produce sensible discourses that may hold these convergences. During
the process, I took as an evidence of the already shown proximity the constant presence of
identical terms (in Portuguese) used both to build textile and texts.
Line is an element in between – it is not point and it is not plane – but, while handling
both text and textile it can express itself in volumes. Those volumes can present themselves
while surfaces are built, or, from surfaces, when modeling is drawn to dress up bodies that are
not plane. During plastic investigations, I have been adopting techniques that allow me to offer
this approach.
Therefore, Take Me Home is the perception that living a creative process is the
experience of combining and ordain contents that generate tensions in assorted intensities. It is
about composing, from a repertoire that counts with contents of domesticity, digression and
regress, and, various readings of texts, images and/or sensations. Trata-se de compor, a partir
do repertório que conta com aprendizados da domesticidade, afastamentos e retornos, e, leituras
variadas quer estejamos falando de textos, de imagens ou sensações. According to Kandinsky
“The ways of perception are not gratuitous either the relationships are established randomly. Even though we miss
the logical of its unfolding, a nexus is sensed. (...) while we relate the phenomenons and link them to ourselves.
Without noticing we guide them according to expectations, desires, fears, and mainly, according to a most intimate
attitude, an internal ordination”. - Bold marked and translated by the author.
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(1997, p. 26) “o conteúdo de uma obra se exprime pela composição, isto é, pela soma
interiormente organizada de tensões desejadas.”6
Take Me Home is also about time. About a time of lives, of inheritances building “now”
and the possibility of future.
And, finally, Take Me Home is to be in this path that takes to a place of belonging. It is
the place of the memory, but it is also present, in this meaning that it is only possible to be
present because these relations that were and those that will be shown here existed (figure 1).
Figure 1: Take Me Home: place of belonging. Genealogies. (private collection)
Take Me Home: first lines
É a sua vida que eu quero bordar na
minha
Como se eu fosse o pano e você fosse a
linha
E a agulha do real nas mãos da fantasia
Fosse bordando ponto a ponto nosso diaa-dia7
Gilberto Gil – A Linha e o Linho
“the content of a piece is expressed by composition, i. e., by the internally organized sum of desired tensions.” –
Translated by the author.
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It is your life that I want to embroider in mine
As if I was cloth and you were the line
And the needle of real in fantasy’s hand
Was embroiding point by point our day-to-day – Translated by the author
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I came from a time. But, for me to get to my time, I needed to comprehend other times
ans the time of others. And, in this time now, after a lot of “fast”, the “slow” was understood. Or it
is something that has been tried, because so many people has been doing things too fast, not
knowing how and why.
During “fast” times, clothes are not made to you anymore. No one knows the scratch of
that pin your mom forgot while she was sewing. How do you relate to your body? How do you
acquire the need experience to explain to anyone else what do you want, if you never lived it, if
you don’t know the words?
When it was my turn, it did not happened because I wished for. It was just something that
we had to try and know. Moms bought their magazine with modeling schemes. The models that
we were going to wear on Christmas were chosen in November. Or not. Mothers could, and
definitely would have the final word. Even though we were little girls, and things did not make
much sense, we were dragged to a shopping frenesi of all sorts of zippers, buttons, needles,
sewing lines and threads, and pins, pins and more pins. Then, the fabrics. Flannels and wool for
winter. Linen. Crepe, taffeta, satin for parties. Cambrac, viscose. One day, mom started to buy
knitted fabric as well, but only after years and years of seersucker and fustian. And one named
Javanese for a while. Many of those fabrics went – some of them for years! – to mom’s trunk of
fabrics.
We knew what is a basting stitch that I hate to do and undo. As I see it, basting stitches
steal the dignity of the line, are useless sew, made to be threw out. I prefer to have my parts
pinned up together, so they can be definitely united by seam. We used to understand the truth of
the materials, knew or were instructed about this truth, and it was something that would tell us
about fabric behave, how our bodies would receive their weight, how it was possible to make
each part meet the next. It seemed to happen almost by accident.
Model chosen, fabrics and everything else were bought, we had to find in this “page of
risks” of the magazine – risky, indeed – the pattern that corresponded to the chosen model and
copy it in tissue paper sheets. I swear I have no idea how we managed to hunt all the lines of all
the parts.
We also known how all that became clothing. Everyone I knew had eventually to leave a
game in the middle to attend his or her mom’s calling. My mother, with her glasses halfway to the
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point to her nose, adjusted the armhole using her scissors while we were wearing this
protoclothing. “Quiet, careful with the pin”. Everyone knew the difference between an armhole
and a neckline.
So, the time used to build clothes, became time of learning.
Those who had more experience, one day would take you by the hand and teach.
However, back then, it was not admissible to make a mistake. You were supposed to learn the
technique until excellence. A needlepoint should be identical to the next. Mistakes should be
undone and corrected. One, two, endless times.
One could not err and let the making take it’s own form. Deviations and uncertainties
were unthinkable.
My grandmothers used to sew too. One more. The other, I guess did not like it very
much, or was too tired of doing it, or just did not had to do it anymore.
One of them embroidered, knitted and crocheted. The other one wrote letters.
I wished for both lines.
Nevertheless, in one year, the path of certainties, of perfect points, and precise lines was
undone. Learning process was left incomplete. I only know the basics of knitting and crocheting,
and to wander. In this wandering experience, I am doing my own path, filled with deviations and
uncertainties. However:
Uma rede de roupas pode efetuar as conexões do amor através das
fronteiras, da morte, porque a roupa é capaz de carregar o corpo ausente, a
memória, a genealogia, bem como o valor material literal. (STALLYBRASS,
2008, p.26)8
Of course I could take recipes and learn to do it right, but, it is in this long journey looking
for a more fertile field, in my particular case, to live this feeling in which the sense is the way, that
I stay present. I am in the “now”. I do not know what it will be and this way, the experience fills me
with this strange and sweet sense/sentiment of cleansing/freedom and extrication.
And then, in this “now” moment, I’m going back home, transmuted.
A web of clothing can effectuate the loving connections through the borders, through death, because clothes are
capable of carrying the absent body, the memory, the genealogy, just as the actual material value. – Translated by
the author.
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(Final?) Considerations – loving the plot more than its outcome9
Ir y venir, seguir y guiar, dar y tener
Entrar y salir de fase
Amar la trama más que al desenlace
Jorge Drexler – La Trama y El Desenlace
Take Me Home is a work in progress, a path that is being traced on the map while I walk.
This cartography allows me to exploit the combination among knitting, crochet and embroidery
(figures 2 and 3). I draw and essay some experimental modeling from reading and writing (figures
4 and 5). I write. I tell again stories that get to me, rescue my memories, but also bring to the
paper’s surface in this writing scheme, linked by many lines that many times overlap one another,
the relations within this project in an quasi-weaving of thoughts (figure 6).
Figuras 2 and 3: Textile surfaces development: experimental encounters: knitting, crochet and embroidery. Mixed
materials. (private collection)
Figures 4 and 5 – Scriptures of an experimental modeling. Fragments. (private collection)
In reference to the Uruguayan musician Jorge Drexler’s song, La Trama y el Desenlace, from the album Amar La
Trama, released in 2010.
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Figure 6 – Fabric of thoughts. Traces. (private collection).
Sometimes everything gets a little bit entangled, as a plot line that is impossible to untie.
Therefore, it is necessary to make a pause, and unravel it slowly, carefully, so the lines don’t get
even more tangled up. Moreover, if it happens in an irredeemable way, instead of undoing it, I
take the deviations to design another senses, contours, conformations.
Curiously, the same thing happens to paths and its deviations and to stories. Some of
them present little differences depending on who is telling them. Rhythm, Cadence, time, if one
story takes another one by the middle and if they get chained up, entangled, depends on the
narrator that I find. While I am working with those memories and affections, while I’m searching
for this place of belonging, the organicity and entanglement become more then a possibility.
These are facts, just as their rectifications, the course corrections, the differences on perception
and interpretation.
Meanwhile, I have not a clear perspective on what will be the result. And cannot define
which one is the route to Take Me Home. However, to live this process in its fullness, I believe
that the emphasis should be on the Project and process, instead of the product and finality. I
cannot give a simple answer, whenever I’m asked – specially by those aunties who master the
techniques that I have embraced -, to the fatal question: “What are you doing?”.
I am on my way.
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Referências Bibliográficas
BONDER, Nilton. Tirando os Sapatos: o caminho de Abraão, um caminho para o outro. São
Paulo: Editora Rocco, 2008.
DERDYK, Edith. Linha de Costura. São Paulo: Editora Iluminuras, 1997.
KANDINSKY, Vassily. Ponto e Linha Sobre Plano. São Paulo: Editora VMF Martins Fontes,
1997.
OSTROWER, Fayga. Criatividade e Processos de Criação. São Paulo: Editora Vozes, 1987.
OZ, Amós. Pantera No Porão. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1999.
PRECIOSA, Rosane. Rumores Discretos da Subjetividade: sujeitos e escrituras em processo.
Porto Alegre: Sulina: Editora da UFRGS, 2010.
STALLYBRASS, Peter. O Casaco de Marx: roupas, memória, dor. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica
Editora, 2008.
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