Braiding to Connect
with Soft Connection Lab
Braiding to Connect
Braiding to Connect is a participatory making performance and research project developed in close collaboration with the Soft Connection Lab from the School of Arts Gent.
Executed during Design Fest Gent 2022 at Industriemuseum Gent, the project invites the audience to form a giant braiding machine to create valuable artefacts.
By enlarging this textile technique, the performance investigates how collective energy and shared effort create intangible value in objects, stimulate emotional connection, and ultimately function as a catalyst for sustainability.
Collaborative Research and Emotional Connection
The project originated from the core mission of the Soft Connection Lab: finding ways to repair and strengthen the emotional connection both between people and with our surrounding material world.
For the first presentation during Design Fest Gent, I was invited to develop a collaborative performance. The result was Braiding to Connect, which uses the textile technique of braiding as a powerful tool to reveal the special dynamics of creating together.
The Research
Brainding to Connect explores how the collective energy stimulates the emotional relationship between makers, consumers, and objects, pointing toward a more conscious and sustainable material world.
At the heart of the project lie the following research questions:
Which traces does this participatory process leave on the created object?
Does this collective effort give the object an intangible added value?
Can we breathe new life into forgotten textile techniques by adding the aspect of 'it being self-made' or 'collective effort'?
And can this unifying design attitude function as a catalyst for sustainability?
The Participatory Mechanism
The performance functions as a human braiding machine, where participants perform a dance and actively interlink to create braided objects. The collective effort of making deliberately leaves a trace on the created artefacts.
In between the performances, the resulting braided objects were left in the space as "silent witnesses" of the collective process and energy.
Specifications
Braiding to Connect is a collaborative project with research group Soft Connection Lab from School of Arts Gent, designed for, and executed during, Design Fest Gent in Industriemuseum Gent.
Type: Participatory Performance and Research Project
Collaboration: Soft Connection Lab, School of Arts Gent
Context: Design Fest Gent 2022
Location: Industriemuseum Gent
Execution Date: April 28th, 2022 (Performances at 14h and 16h)
Research Focus: Collective making, emotional connection, and sustainability.