The Eccentric Archive is one chapter in the ongoing arts based research Loomshuttles / Warpaths. It is based on 48 textiles from the Andes collected over a period of thirty-five years. In the Andean region cloth are perceived as being alive and are understood as a medium of communications. The collection includes ancient and modern cloth and clothing; hand-made and mass produced; natural and synthetic fibres. The archive consists of descriptions of each item in the collection, and responses to them both by the artist in the form of poster collages, and by the responses of other artists, philosophers, fashion designers, sociologists, drag performers, museum directors, tailors, and shamans. Numerical dates on the posters, made from woven hair, refer to texts co-written with John Barker - which bring to light the continuing struggles of workers in the textile and clothing industries, and of rebellion by style of dress. The archive exposes how entangled with Imperialist history textiles and dyes have been, as well as the impacts of shifts in technologies and of colour itself.
The research was supported by FWF Der Wissenschaftsfonds (AR 19-G21).
Biography
Ines Doujak is an artist working in London and Vienna, where she studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (1988–93). Since 4 years she is project leader of the arts based research ´Loomshuttles / Warpaths´, funded by the FWF Austrian Science Funds. She is also key researcher in ´Utopian Pulse: Flares in the Darkroom´ located at the Secession in Vienna, which started in 2013.
John Barker is a novelist performer and researcher, based in London and Vienna with work shown at the Busan Biennale, Korea; the RCA, London: and the Museum of Modern Art, Klagenfurt.