18.05.00 : patchwork

Thursday 18th May

Just a few patches from Jennifer Bloomer's ARCHITECTURE AND THE TEXT p.175-176 PATCHWORK

"Sewing/"sewering/dissemination, collectivity, piecework, the feminine, raggedy, (of rage), related to (WEAVING) (the poetic), stains of pricks/blood and bleeding, the prick of the shuttle in "Sleeping Beauty' (ROCKET), eye patch, patching holes, garden patch, working a little bit of something." ... The conventions of patchwork are strong: there are typologies of pattern, proprieties of stitching method and length, ancient rules of thumb...The crazy quilt is an exquisite model of invention under conditions of scarcity. It relies on the fabrication of joints among scraps of preexisting shapes. Here, theory as authority fades to the dominance of pragmatics and invention. By pragmatics, I suggest not only such categories as material and function, but also the important category of use, which includes the quilt's role as a historical project, a memory construct: here is a bit of last year's Easter dress, this piece from grandmother's curtains...A slice of family history that is not about lines of legitimacy and trees, the patchwork quilt is a construction that signifies the pale, faint layers of otherness that lie within the dominant. In Riemannian space, 'Each vicinity is therefore like a shred of Euclidean, Joycean, Piranesian) space, but the linkage between one vicinity and the next is not defined and can be effected in an infinite number of ways. Riemann space at its most general thus presents itself as an amorphous collection of pieces that are juxtaposed but not attached to each other'...In short, if we follow Lautmannl's fine description, (just quoted) 'Riemannian space is pure patchwork' (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus."

Pat Potter - Alabama Studio