interlace exhibition

Interlace was built around daily interaction between designers as weavers and machines. In the catalogue, art historian Anne Röhl refers to this relationship itself as condensed in the history of the loom. She describes the setup of the research in Interlace as ‘a variety of ‘experimental systems’: systems of manipulation designed to give unknown answers to questions that the experimenters themselves are not yet able clearly to ask.’ Instead of ‘devices generating answers’, Röhl points out that these machines must be regarded as ‘vehicles for materializing questions’ and as ‘machines for making the future.’
The Space Loom was developed as part of Interlace, textile research, commissioned by Lafayette Anticipations.  This evolutive exhibition showcased live research and production on the theme of weaving. Throughout the three months of the exhibition, three looms—the Space Loom, the Seamless Loom, and the digital TC2 loom—were activated by a range of professional designers working at, or invited by Jongeriuslab.

Space Loom #1
The concept of this work is to use the whole building as a Loom. All mobile floors of the large gallery space in the center of the building were taken down, and the custom made warp was hung from the top of the building.
In the centre of the building, the exhibition tower looked like a monumental loom: warp threads more than 16m-long were hung in the “sky” of the Foundation. From the movable platforms, weavers intertwined weft yarns. As the exhibition progressed, volumes and spheres formed 3D woven graphic shapes in space. Designers
The originality of the Space Loom lies not only in its monumentality but also in its design: usually the warp yarns are regular and it is the weft yarns that create the patterns in the textile; here the ancestral hierarchy of the loom has been reversed.
Jongerius: “My interest is in unravelling a piece of cloth and in deconstructing hierarchies: what if the warp becomes more important than the weft?”

Space Loom #2
The Space Loom #2 (previously called Seamless Loom) was developed as part of Interlace, textile research, commissioned by Lafayette Anticipations.
This project treated the topic of weaving not only as a craft with a long history, but also as a technical, thematic, and critical enquiry; a vehicle for cultural innovation.  The Space Loom #2 was designed to research 3D weaving. These are four looms cut and joined together to form a new machine to weave 3D “bricks”. For every new brick, the loom was adapted. New objects were developed in a constant interplay between the machine and the design it produces.
For three months, designers from Jongeriuslab did research and experiments in 3D weaving filled Lafayette Anticipations’ spaces, turning them into a designer’s laboratory, all the while questioning our relationship to textile, tactility, labour, and the natural environment, and the limited vocabulary we have to describe these relationships.
Jongerius: “The power of experiments is to make us look at the world in new ways, to make us think new thoughts, and say new things. To achieve that, we must first unlearn all the things we think we know, and undo all the hierarchies we have established in the course of time, to organise our world around.”
“The early textile studies are a start in thinking about weaving and start building looms.
The 2D and 3D weaving experiments in these projects have brought the discovery of ‘a third thread’, which we named the WIX, a non-binary construction by nature.  The thread alternates as warp and weft, disrupting the age-old tradition. These early textile studies are a start in thinking about and weaving in another way then weaving with warp and weft.”

Weavers Werkstatt
Over the three months that the exhibition Interlace took place at Lafayette Anticipations, a select group of designers was invited to use the loom for a personal research project part of Weavers Werkstatt, an initiative started by Jongeriuslab to stimulate the development of weaving knowledge among designers.
The common industrial Jacquard machines run with computer programmes are made for efficiency that offer no option for experimentation or intervention.  Therefore, we took a TC2 jacquard loom that is digitally programmed but at the same time, like a handloom, requires weaving by hand. It is operated by one weaver at the time.
The following designers participated at the Weavers Werkstatt at Anticipations from June-September 2019: Edith van Berkel, Bless (Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag), Brigitte Dalmaijer, Hella Jongerius, Jos Klarenbeek, Aliki van der Kruijs, Sarah Meyers & Laura Fügmann, Annie Millican, Vera de Pont.