Abstract
This paper focuses upon means and ways that knowledge gained through practice can be expressed from within that practice itself. The matrix of knowledge proposed draws on the intertwining of text, textile and techne1. These notions share etymological roots, but are also formative processes that together establish an interwoven structure in which writing and art-making are brought together in knowledge-production. When Roland Barthes suggests that “Text means tissue” (Barthes, 1973, p. 64) he highlights a material-conceptual interplay between text, tissue and truth and draws attention to the generative activity of creating the text/textile. This generative mode is the focus here and will be drawn upon to establish a matrix of knowledge-production involving signifiers, signifieds, materiality and concepts. The matrix proposed offers a form of knowledge-production that dissolves boundaries between theoretical and practice-based approaches, or what Bracha Ettinger refers to as “borderswerving” (Ettinger, 2006). The matrixial structuring will focus upon three processes: folding, fraying and seaming. Folding offers a focus upon ways in which the communication of tacit knowledge within practice initiates and generates new understandings and expressions of that tacit knowledge. To think of fraying cloth is to envisage its construction re-vealed. Here the concept of fraying will be considered in terms of breaking down resistance at the edge, enabling a porosity between tacit and explicit knowledge. Seaming will consider how the tacit knowledge of making is brought into relationship with written and aural modes of communication. The material processes of seaming suggest a generative and communicative conceptual-material model. These three models offer a materialisation and matrixiation of Barthes text, suggesting that the material activities of writing textile and making text are allied and intertwined modes of knowledge-generation. In this the tacit is communicated and the communicable is simultaneously integrated within the tacit.
Keywords
text; textile; matrix; seam; fold; fray
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/eksig2013.103
Citation
Dormor, C.(2013) Matrixiating Knowledge, in Nimkulrat, N., Niedderer, K., Evans, M. (eds.), EKSIG 2013: Knowing Inside Out – Experiential Knowledge, Expertise and Connoisseurship, 4–5 July 2013, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/eksig2013.103
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Matrixiating Knowledge
This paper focuses upon means and ways that knowledge gained through practice can be expressed from within that practice itself. The matrix of knowledge proposed draws on the intertwining of text, textile and techne1. These notions share etymological roots, but are also formative processes that together establish an interwoven structure in which writing and art-making are brought together in knowledge-production. When Roland Barthes suggests that “Text means tissue” (Barthes, 1973, p. 64) he highlights a material-conceptual interplay between text, tissue and truth and draws attention to the generative activity of creating the text/textile. This generative mode is the focus here and will be drawn upon to establish a matrix of knowledge-production involving signifiers, signifieds, materiality and concepts. The matrix proposed offers a form of knowledge-production that dissolves boundaries between theoretical and practice-based approaches, or what Bracha Ettinger refers to as “borderswerving” (Ettinger, 2006). The matrixial structuring will focus upon three processes: folding, fraying and seaming. Folding offers a focus upon ways in which the communication of tacit knowledge within practice initiates and generates new understandings and expressions of that tacit knowledge. To think of fraying cloth is to envisage its construction re-vealed. Here the concept of fraying will be considered in terms of breaking down resistance at the edge, enabling a porosity between tacit and explicit knowledge. Seaming will consider how the tacit knowledge of making is brought into relationship with written and aural modes of communication. The material processes of seaming suggest a generative and communicative conceptual-material model. These three models offer a materialisation and matrixiation of Barthes text, suggesting that the material activities of writing textile and making text are allied and intertwined modes of knowledge-generation. In this the tacit is communicated and the communicable is simultaneously integrated within the tacit.