Much of the work that goes into weaving cloth requires what could be called ‘invisible labour’ similar to Lazzarato’s (1994) immaterial labour. Weaver Raisa Kabir explains in a 2021 interview that the “body is so present in textiles but sometimes when objects are showcased, the history of their makers are erased” (“Artist and weaver Raisa Kabir”, 2021, p. 12). Typically, we do not think about the pain, planning or techniques that create woven cloth, we are divorced from the embodied labour that creates them. Many decisions and processes that take place in the process of weaving occur during these ‘hidden’ stages such as weave drafting and threading-up are essential to weaving. Just as the informational and cultural content of many digitally mediated commodities of the gig economy are obscured by the seemingly streamlined experience of digital services, creating textiles depends on vast networks of hidden labour.
Similarly the operation of signal analysis, FTs, k-space and IFTs are concealed in the process of MRI. Hidden labour is latent in cloth and biomedical imaging which I observed when scanning phantoms in the lab with Siow and experiencing the complexity of the MRI lab. The hidden labour in weaving imprints itself onto my body via the rusty residues from the heddles and long periods of threading-up.
Creating the warp and invisible labour is part of the body-loom assemblage. As an artist and a novice, I valued and needed expertise. Learning to weave on a dobby loom is best achieved with practice and in-person demonstration, which was impossible to organise during the lockdowns. Very few people know how to use my loom. The challenge of being in lockdown, having to self-isolate due to cancer treatment, and developing a weaving practice alone was difficult but meaningful. I gained online advice from expert weaver Jeannine Lawder in the latter months of 2020 and early 2021. We discussed weaving via zoom, which helped me move my warp from the warping mill to the loom and ‘tie-on’. Without an in-person demonstration, I depended on “sensory perception and bodily mimesis” to guide me (Pallasmaa, 2017, p. 97). I integrated a theoretically informed investigative practice substantiated by the sensations, forces and flows of the body-loom assemblage.
I questioned what my inexperience was causing me to miss and what my lack of experience enabled me to try out or capture unselfconsciously. Threading up, particularly doing so alone, required that I pick out and separate each thread in the correct sequence from the back of the loom and meticulously thread it through the tiny heddles. Being in isolation with my loom connected me to its social-material entanglements by making the difficulties of these tasks more pronounced. Weaving was testing my bodily resistance, forcing me into a practice that required logic and discipline, which differed from the flow and sensorial response of creaturing matter in phantom-making. My home was dominated by the loom, imbued with “thing power” (Bennett, 2010) intensified by its large size and my inability to use it fluently. Themes of domesticity and feeling trapped began to weave themselves into my practice. Disentangling and threading the total 720 threads took a frustratingly long time, but I could only do what I could do given what my body was still going through following surgery and treatment. Acceptance of my limitations was important for my recovery and process. Research and recovery were mutually inclusive events, and appreciating the embodiment of my practice was a way of learning about my new body.
Drawing from Lyon’s creaturely practice of being care-full I valued the complex, frustrating feelings that charged through the body-loom assemblage rather than disregarding negative emotions. Creaturing the body-loom assemblage in its totality, incorporates the liminality of illness, loom preparation and invisible labour. Weaving is a black box I managed to decypher by learning to overcome difficulties and develop a knowledge of woven work produced as part of the body-loom assemblage.