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Hällsten, Johanna and Connelly, Heather (2025) Thinking through / practicing materiality – a dialogue on practice. In: Weaving, language, writing: thinking and practicing research-creation, 11-13th June 2025, University of Angers, France.
Using Heidegger’s A dialogue on language - between a Japanese and an inquirer (1982) essay as a starting point, Connelly and Hällsten performative essay will conduct a dialogue that moves across and between languages, materials and practices – exploring the verbal, visual, sensual aspects of their artistic research. Taking the Swedish word nysta as a starting point, they will work reflexively, unpicking, unravelling and translating their praxis through words and materials (thread, cloth and sound) in an attempt to understand and translate that which is difficult to translate, and how materials plays a particular role (sensations and affects) in attempting to give form to something that is ‘undefinable’ (Heidegger 1982:13), or alludes definition.
Both artists draw on listening practices, such as Jean-Luc Nancy’s seminal text Listening (2007), where he states: “to listen is to be straining towards a possible meaning, and consequently one that is not immediately accessible” (2007). It is through the embodied work with textiles, weaving and sound (oral and material) that we explore this possibility of meaning making. Importantly using rhythm of the utterance and weave moving across, and creating, a score or surface, unearthing that recurring return of the unfamiliar in our multilingual practices.
Connelly and Hällsten have worked with translation over the past few decades - working closely together as supervisor and supervisee and coming together to collaborate on multilingual performances and installations. This call provides the opportunity for them to scrutinise how materials and processes become part of the dialogue, an agent, that is not passive. This will be explored through a poetic performative essay, that will provide insights into their practices, as they continue to build on their shared knowledge and cultural differences.
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives 4.0.
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