Lara Rabinowitz: Something on the Way to Becoming Something Else
Something on the Way to Becoming Something Else explores the idea that objects have agency, the power to act upon and to affect others. My concept arises from the new and growing interdisciplinary field of New Materialism, which challenges the belief that objects and materials are passive and separate from humans, and instead emphasizes how materials have the ability to act upon us.
For the project, I have selected an assemblage of artifacts from my daily life that have a powerful effect on me. In some cases, the objects remind me of a memory and influence my emotions. In other cases, the objects are functional and help me accomplish a task or complete an action.
Specifically, I will explore how these everyday objects and their vitality compel me to create textile products imbued with memory and emotion. I will use a variety of textile techniques such as weaving on the TC2 loom, digital printing, fabric manipulation, and surface design for my exploration. Artistically, I will draw inspiration from Dadaism and Surrealism which are characterized by unexpected juxtapositions, the nonsensical, and expressing the unconscious mind.