Textile Translations. Intermedia Processes of Textile Transfer in the Arts

International symposium

University of Zurich

6-7 June, 2013

Processes of transfer and translation are crucial to the production and fashioning of textile materials: In the production of textiles, images taken from other media are submitted to the structure of warp and weft or translated into loops, stitches and knots. Translations into the textile and vice versa inevitably entail variation, mutation and adaptation. In this way, translation processes leave traces inscribed in the particular object. 

Textiles can be positioned at the beginning and end of translation processes, or even due to their flexibility and adaptability, embody transitory conversion. Focussing on the process as the 'in between', the interactions of textiles and other media are the main concern of the symposium. Because of the variety of manufacturing processes and their flexibility and malleability as material, technique, medium and metaphor, textiles provide a number of starting points for future research on processes of transfer. The symposium "Textile Translations“ seeks to investigate these. 

Thursday, June 6, 2013

SOC-1-101

14:00 Welcome and Introduction Anika Reineke and Anne Röhl (University of Zurich)

I. Appropriation of Textile Crafts

Chair: Merel van Tilburg (INHA, Paris/KHI, Florence)

14:15 Leena Crasemann (Freie Universität Berlin) Sewing. Unravelling. Cutting. Of Sewn Everyday Things and Textile Art Objects

14:45 Sara Martinetti (EHESS/INHA, Paris) The Fabricated Image. Pictorial and Textile Situations in the Work of Robert Gober

15:15 Discussion

15:30 Caroline Schopp (University of Chicago) “…draw him from behind”. The Roth-Wiener Tapestry Collaboration, 1974–1998

16:00 Discussion

16:15 Coffee Break

II. Textile Transfer

Chair: Anne Röhl (University of Zurich)

16:45 Kathrin Fehringer (University of Erfurt) Textile Handarbeit als Raumkonstitutiv: Das Bild des ‚hortus conclusus’ in Flauberts “Madame Bovary”

17:15 Johanna Függer (University of Vienna) Hanna(h) Höchs Stickerei der Avantgarde

17:45 Discussion

FRIDAY, 7 June

SOC-1-101

9:30 Coffee and Welcome

III. Translations of Motifs, Patterns and Objects 

Chair: Anika Reineke, Tristan Weddigen (University of Zurich)

9:45 Vera-Simone Schulz (KHI, Florence) Text(ile)s Translated. Woven Words in 14th-Century Italian Painting

10:15 Ariane Koller (University of Bern) Gewirkte Wissenschaft – Kartographierte Geschichte. Intermediale Transferprozesse zwischen Tapisserien und Karten

10:45 Discussion

11:00 Coffee Break

11:15 Liza Oliver (Northwestern University, Chicago) Don Quixote in 18th-Century India. Translation and Migration of Indian ‘Kalamkari’ Textile Designs for France

11:45 Karin Westphal-Erikson (University of Copenhagen) Porous ‘Paintings’ – Asger Jorn’s Textile Art in between Painting and Architecture

12:15 Discussion

13:00 Closing remarks

Anne Röhl (ERC-Project TEXTILE,University of Zurich)

Anika Reineke(ERC-Project TEXTILE,University of Zurich)