Vital Signs 2: Paper Session 1b
Material Culture
Tuesday 7 September, 2 - 3.30pm
'Objects, affect and the research relationship' - Prof Rachel Thomson (Open University)
In this paper I reflect on what happened when grandmothers were invited to select two objects for discussion at interviews: one representing their past and one their present and future. These interviews took place as part of a longitudinal qualitative study of family dynamics arising from the arrival of a new generation, and constituted the women’s second encounter with the researcher over a four year period. The resulting interviews were highly charged with emotion, facilitating a different quality of communication than had taken place previously. The materiality of the object appeared to facilitate the communication of affect, in such as way that the interaction between the researcher and the researched became the site of a heightened and creative potential for the generation of insight. In this paper I describe the method and the way that different participants responded to the initial invitation, before focusing in detail on one object and the interaction that arose from it. The example explores the ways in which objects can exceed conventional approaches to narration, capturing something of the paradoxical character of experience, communicating more than would be possible in words. The discussion is located within current interest in material culture, temporal processes and psycho-social methods.
'Mirabilia Domestica - a guided tour through a cabinet of textile wonders' - Solveigh Goett (University of East London)
In 16th century Europe, scholars were striving to come to a better understanding of the diversity and complexity of the world by creating a microcosm of its wonders in their collections of naturalia and artificalia. These cabinets of curiosities were significant sites for material, scientific and artistic investigations; in present-day terminology they could be described as interdisciplinary practice-based research and resource centres. Acknowledged as the forerunner to universities, museums and galleries alike, the pre-disciplinary Wunderkammer has been rediscovered in recent years as an alternative model for knowledge derived through sensory correspondences rather than linguistic means, linked to contemporary contexts of interdisciplinarity and likened to the visual networks of digital technologies.
Inspired by the model of the past, its enduring legacy and subversive potential, textile artist and researcher Solveigh Goett has created her cabinet of domestic wonders to be explored by curious hands and minds in search of missing links in the fabric of life. Mirabilia Domestica draws on tacit textile knowledge and pays homage to the small things whose significance is often overlooked; it is a space for meaning making, memory work, enchantment, evocation and flights of the imagination. In words and images, through fabrics and fabrications, this paper reflects on concepts of curiosity, meandering methods and sensory investigations that challenge the logo-centric bias of academia as well as the ocular-centricity of the visual arts.
http://www.mirabilia-domestica.co.uk/ [opens in new window]
'The materiality and sensuality of clothing: researching and representing the non-verbal and textual' - Dr Sophie Woodward (University of Manchester)
A key premise of doing research into material culture is the need to understand the materiality of objects, that is, the relationship between material propensities and the social contexts of use, or manufacture. This paper will address the issues posed by adopting such an approach, drawing upon my own research into clothing. A key challenge is how to understand materials and the properties of clothing as a social scientist, as this usually, falls within the disciplinary domain of textile technology and colour chemistry. Rather than being seen as an end in themselves, interrogating material properties is a means of understanding how, through interaction with wearers, particular memories or relationships are enabled, as I focus on the worn items of clothing. The main focus of this paper is, the challenge of understanding the particularly intimate relationship clothing has to the individual body, as a sensual and material part of everyday, mundane practices. My broad methodology was ethnographic in the home, drawing upon a wide range of methods (diaries, observations, photographs, object based interviews). I will consider in this paper both how to research and access an understanding of an embodied and material relationship, rather one that is necessarily accessible through what people say and also how to represent this. Academic research is written up in textual form, perhaps also using images, which raises a particular paradox for writing about the materiality of clothing, given that I am trying to convey a relationship that is neither textual nor verbalized.
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