The Event of a Stitch: The Seamstress, the Traveler, and the Storyteller

Abstract

This article will take as its points of departure the event, the visit, and the legacy, told through the voice of the seamstress, the traveler, and the storyteller. This is a precarious ecology built upon exchange and encounter. An event could be considered to be a point of rupture: an effect that exceeds its causes. To visit, on the other hand, is to spend time not in place of the residents, but together with them. These two points of departure necessarily involve the leaving behind of traces, a legacy. This article draws upon the legacy of Anni Albers, whose assertion that all weaving traces back to “the event of a thread,” together with Walter Benjamin’s storyteller/craftsman, and their fragmented and embellished story-fabric. This article will consider these legacies and their makers, seeking to expand the notion of stitch as a form for enlarged mentality. Works by Áine Phillips, Kirstie Macleod, and Chiharu Shiota will be drawn upon as a way by which to think of the event of a stitch as a cosmopolitan practice—a mode of practice which exists in each moment of encounter between needle, thread, and cloth.