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Back to ArchiveTouch(ing) Grounds
Spring - Summer 2021
Touch(ing) Grounds is a project carried out in Spring and Summer 2020 at Design School Kolding in Lab for Sustainability and Design. The project is a pilot study of methodologies in design research to engage with touch. Throughout the study, Louise Permiin, Anna-Mamusu Sesay Wehlitz and Louise Ravnløkke held a series of workshops to explore the phenomenon of touch.
The textile and clothing industry as we know it today is characterized by consumption structures that are primarily focused on visual representations. Yet, wearing clothes affords a full-body experience, combining all the senses. Therefore, the study started from a curiosity to explore alternative ways of orientation, shifting the focus towards embodied knowledge, and experimenting with bodily ways of knowing.
From the standpoint of fostering green transition in textiles and clothing, the aim of Touch(ing) Grounds was to shift the attention from environmental sustainability to the complex relationships that are embedded in and emerge from the aesthetic experience of using garments – the relationships which can result in joy, satisfaction and active use of clothes.
“We can see without being seen, but can we touch without being touched?”
Puig de la Bellacassa (2017: 99)
Inspired by current debates on the notion of care and connectedness, the project set out to explore how bodily engagements and bodily ways of knowing can contribute to shifting the focus from visual towards other sensuous experiences, how touch can become a means, literally as well as metaphorically to foster care and connectedness for and with garments.
The project was running during the time of the pandemic lockdown. This became a creative constraint in the process, which challenged the inherent understanding of touch as a haptic sensory perception. The situation of being remote and holding the workshops online inspired for performance art as a medium of exploration. A choreography was developed to emphasise embodied knowledge – literally in relation to the kinetic feel of clothing towards the body and metaphorically draw on the connectedness with plants as a resource for making fibres, yarns, textiles and garments.
In a series of three workshops, the choreography (Cotton Sock Choreography) was used consistently in relation to other activities about textile materials and use of clothing. The Cotton Sock Choreography was used to tune in the attention to bodily ways of knowing, while the other activities of the workshop intended to generate discussions about aesthetic experiences and garment relations. These activities involved textiles and garments as tools to guide the dialogue between participants.
The combination of bodily movement and the garment material assisted in generating fruitful discussions while giving participants a chance to elaborate on garment connectedness – revealing in-depth insights which often are considered tacit knowledge, not being articulated.
Designers, even though being trained in using their hands to generate knowledge during design processes; for example, by experimenting with different materials, seem often not to fully account for all the senses their bodies provide for experiencing the world. Even though the body holds a rather prominent role in many design fields, but maybe most specifically in textile and clothing design, our own bodies and the way we use them in design processes stay rather underexplored.
Experimenting with these different activities involving the body and garment materials, provided a selection of methodologies in design research to engage with the matter of touch in textiles and clothing – which might help us come closer to an understanding of relational entanglements: Whether it’s the larger picture of care for resources and the planet or the closer relations of care for the garments in our wardrobe.
See more of the outcome of the Touch(ing) Grounds project in the (open source) video article published in the Journal of Embodied Research.
Ravnløkke, L. & Permiin, L. & Wehlitz, A. S., 2023, “Bodily ways of knowing in fashion: Connectedness between clothing and the body”, Journal of Embodied Research 6(1): 5. https://doi.org/10.16995/jer.9613
The textile and clothing industry as we know it today is characterized by consumption structures that are primarily focused on visual representations. Yet, wearing clothes affords a full-body experience, combining all the senses. Therefore, the study started from a curiosity to explore alternative ways of orientation, shifting the focus towards embodied knowledge, and experimenting with bodily ways of knowing.
From the standpoint of fostering green transition in textiles and clothing, the aim of Touch(ing) Grounds was to shift the attention from environmental sustainability to the complex relationships that are embedded in and emerge from the aesthetic experience of using garments – the relationships which can result in joy, satisfaction and active use of clothes.
“We can see without being seen, but can we touch without being touched?”
Puig de la Bellacassa (2017: 99)
Inspired by current debates on the notion of care and connectedness, the project set out to explore how bodily engagements and bodily ways of knowing can contribute to shifting the focus from visual towards other sensuous experiences, how touch can become a means, literally as well as metaphorically to foster care and connectedness for and with garments.
The project was running during the time of the pandemic lockdown. This became a creative constraint in the process, which challenged the inherent understanding of touch as a haptic sensory perception. The situation of being remote and holding the workshops online inspired for performance art as a medium of exploration. A choreography was developed to emphasise embodied knowledge – literally in relation to the kinetic feel of clothing towards the body and metaphorically draw on the connectedness with plants as a resource for making fibres, yarns, textiles and garments.
In a series of three workshops, the choreography (Cotton Sock Choreography) was used consistently in relation to other activities about textile materials and use of clothing. The Cotton Sock Choreography was used to tune in the attention to bodily ways of knowing, while the other activities of the workshop intended to generate discussions about aesthetic experiences and garment relations. These activities involved textiles and garments as tools to guide the dialogue between participants.
The combination of bodily movement and the garment material assisted in generating fruitful discussions while giving participants a chance to elaborate on garment connectedness – revealing in-depth insights which often are considered tacit knowledge, not being articulated.
Designers, even though being trained in using their hands to generate knowledge during design processes; for example, by experimenting with different materials, seem often not to fully account for all the senses their bodies provide for experiencing the world. Even though the body holds a rather prominent role in many design fields, but maybe most specifically in textile and clothing design, our own bodies and the way we use them in design processes stay rather underexplored.
Experimenting with these different activities involving the body and garment materials, provided a selection of methodologies in design research to engage with the matter of touch in textiles and clothing – which might help us come closer to an understanding of relational entanglements: Whether it’s the larger picture of care for resources and the planet or the closer relations of care for the garments in our wardrobe.
See more of the outcome of the Touch(ing) Grounds project in the (open source) video article published in the Journal of Embodied Research.
Ravnløkke, L. & Permiin, L. & Wehlitz, A. S., 2023, “Bodily ways of knowing in fashion: Connectedness between clothing and the body”, Journal of Embodied Research 6(1): 5. https://doi.org/10.16995/jer.9613