Eccentric Archive

Velvet It was the most expensive of all cloth in the Renaissance period and while banking dynasties like the Medicis were built on its production, the late 15th century ruler of Milan was murdered by his own courtiers when his velvet extravagances threatened their position.

1954 A victorious strike by the mainly female workforce in Japan was against the Omy Kenshi Spinning Company, which held monthly conferences to select and fire workers who were sick or otherwise could not work hard enough.

David Riff Things changed again with Pussy Riot. I thought their bank robber balaclavas looked extremely familiar, though I couldn’t figure out why. It was only when they performed their punk-prayer that I got it. This is much closer to some inner solidarity with Aymara women who donned these masks to become their conquistador oppressors, inhabiting that heartbeat of a heartless world that pulses through their prayers.

more

Blue Jeans The jean cloth originated in 16th century Genoa used by its far-travelling sailors and was worn by poor working people. Denim started around the same time in France. Especially receptive to indigo, denim won out as the cloth but in a 20th century marriage, jean(s) supplied the name.

2006 With women at the forefront a strike at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla, Egypt with its partial success created a precedent for further strikes in the industry, and for community support two years later when a general strike in the same city became a pioneering attack on the Mubarak regime.

Guiseppe Campuzano Some images have to pay a price in order to remain in the public imaginary. Something is kept, but it is stripped of everything, like when a museum buys a piece, especially in Peru, it loses all its value and all its political power.

more

Lace Only the best lace, imported from Flanders, would do for the 18th century ladies of Lima whose extravagance lead to the “ruin of many families”. Attempts to control imports however focused on indigenous women who responded by weaving lace.

1971 The workforce at Yarur Textiles, the biggest producer in Chile, took over the factory though it has not been in the Allende government’s plans. Uniquely they self managed the factory while maintaining the independence of its trade union.

Thomas Kilpper knots the quipu with the work of Jens Risch

more

Indigo A ruthlessly organised industry to meet the Western demand for indigo had such an effect upon the lungs of the slave labourers who processed it, that they never lived over seven years. When prices were high, indigo dyestuffs could be exchanged for slaves: ”pound for pound of Negro weighed naked.”

1944 The market women of Cuzco, Peru, created an influential Union and their actions became a symbol of popular classes` struggles. Years later during a general strike they kidnapped the opposing General, pulled off his hat, and urinated into it, forcing him into negotiations.

Waldo Jordan I don’t have anything against things being mixed in principal, it’s not that, it was always that people living in the altiplano had to come down to the jungle or the sea, they needed coca leaves or a boat or they were escaping Spanish taxes.

more

Calico The imports of this wonderfully dyed cotton from India threatened home-spun English wool to such a degree that many prohibitions against its import were made until the secrets of its production became known. In the meanwhile the writer Daniel Defoe was especially moralistic against its use by women servants.

0208 The Peruvian gay movement decided to reclaim the significance of Francisco Pro by celebrating “Gay Pride” in Lima on this day. He was discovered wearing woman’s clothes in 1803, brought to trial, charged with sodomy, condemned on the grounds that tailoring was a “strange” profession for a man of and sentenced to a “public shame walk” and prison.

Cristina Bubba The Bolivian government built a museum for the restituted weavings in Coroma, but the people didn’t want to put their ancestors there because it was like a jail. So the museum is built, and it’s empty. Either the people must be able to live in the museum, to make rituals there, to look after them. And if they can’t have that then the museum should only be for pictures of the weavings.

more

Feathers In pre-colonial Mexico the emperor Moctezuma had an aviary of exotic birds to garner feathers for cloaks and head-dresses which needed 300 attendants. The Spanish invaders in the Andean region were so worried at their use by indigenous shamans, that they banned them.

1904 In German colonized Togo, there was call for a “cotton Kulturkampf” against the USA and to this end freed American Negro slaves were brought in as role models. Their insistence on use of the plough undermined women’s independence as cultivators.

Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz The word combination Chaka Nayra sounds nice as a name, but has no exact meaning in Aymará. Chaka means bone and nayra means eyes or big eyes. But nayra can also be understood as an extension of the eyes, or as gaze or gaze into the distance. Chaka nayra, then, could just as well be translated as “bone with the big/beautiful eyes” or “bony gaze into the distance.”

more

Gold Gold thread woven into velvet clothing was a signifier of power in Europe at the time of the invasion of the Americas while the invaders themselves were only interested in it as money treasure, ripping off the gold sheathing from an Inca temple with crowbars.

1859 Bengali tenant farmers refused to sow any indigo for the British colonialists saying they would die without land to grow their own rice. The scale and level of self-organisation involved in this campaign created a precedent for the Indian Independence movement.

Catherine Lord Upon admission, the child was given a number and a new name. Parents who hoped to reclaim their child one day left a small piece of fabric which hospital officials pinned to the ledger page that recorded the date of the child’s acquisition, along with her weight, hair color, physical condition, marks on the body and so forth. This scrap of fabric was the translation of a child.

more

Acryl Peruvian handloom weavers near Cusco like the colours of acrylic thread from China, but find it of poor quality and anathema to Quechua aesthetics, so they re-spin it on drop spindles.

1377 The wool weavers of Ypres, Flanders, launched an uprising against their conditions, marking close to 100 years of contesting the power of cloth merchants. It was a time when “weavers did not become heretics, heretics became weavers”.

Cordula Daus Of Gods, Textiles, and Politics: A hole gapes in the woven bodies on the upper left – a tiny tear in the thread, a stretched loop – creating the impression that you could look into the heart or stomach of the deities. The tale of the fabric, the access it might provide to history and its subjects, remains opaque.

more

Camouflage While a chameleon put down on a tartan rug, ‘died from over extertion’, armies pioneered new cloth patterns with a range of Leaf, Pea, Frog skin/Leopard skin and Disruptive Pattern, spurred on by the mass deaths of French World War I soldiers in red trousers.

1831 The silk weavers of Lyon, France begin a cycle of insurrections prompted by a drastic cut in the prices they got from cloth merchants. They were independent owners of Jacquard looms, which “had not automated the physical labour of weaving, but of implementing designs” made by the weavers themselves.

Fahim Amir How to undermine the architecture of the present, to plunge mole tunnels through the colonial character of the notion of contemporality, one that speaks of human beings who live at the same time, yet are assigned another one?

more

Indian Yellow This expensive dye was produced from the urine of cows fed exclusively on mango leaves. The animals died early from malnutrition and when this was taken up as an issue by Hindu cow protection societies, the British colonialists saw it was a threat and put a stop to production.

1917 As he admitted, Mahatma Gandhi had never seen a spinning wheel in his life even though he had chosen it as the symbol of the Indian independence movement. It took the ‘enterprising widow’ Gangaben Mujmuder to make it practical.

Simon Sheikh Insects and rocks can be read as aesthetic, as drawing attention to themselves through their beautific appearance, and thus as communication, a desirous exchange that is nonetheless initiated by the objects of the world rather than the (human) subject, thus creating a language of things in the forms, shapes, contours, colours and so on.

more

Grey What was unthinkable in earlier centuries, changed in the fifteenth. For the first time in the history of Western clothing, grey – relegated until then to work clothes, the poor, and the habits of Franciscan monks, which were meant to be colourless–became popular among the upper classes of Europe.

1780 One main aim of the uprising led by Tupac Amaru II and Micaela Bastidas against the Spanish authorities of Peru, was to free Indians from the prisons that call themselves cloth workshops, where they “were destined for a quick civil death”.

Irene Silverblatt Weaving substantiated women’s powers, as Andeans knew well. Neither colonialism nor modern capitalism can obliterate a textile’s soul. 

more

Negro Cloth A small ration of this ‘flimsy fabric’ of unbleached cotton was given to North American slaves to make their own clothes. It was considered important that there was a gulf between the dress of master and slave, but using the indigo they were forced to pick and make into a dye, negro women outraged the Law by dressing ‘beyond their condition’.

1795 The ties of solidarity the weavers of Cuddalore, India created against the oppressive demands of the East India Company “were not fixed, but continually made and remade…and demonstrated extraordinary inventiveness, resourcefulness and creativity.”

John Barker There is no peace in my heart, nor my head, nor my blood that will itch until we have killed them all, or they have run away. But for this night fold me in your weave, warm me, make me a potato in the soil and bring me sleep before I join the others.

more

Dye Spy Dye chemistry was the basis of the whole chemical industry and in the early years of the 20th century it was dominated by Germany, including its factories in the USA. The First World War with embargoes and factory seizures saw the start of a long competition with the USA, which involved the use of industrial espionage by both sides.

1794 The successful revolution by slaves in the indigo and other plantations of Haiti, which led to the formation of an independent state in 1804, soon inspired revolts of cotton slaves in the USA.

Shooshie Sulaiman

more

Wax Print The technique starts with Indonesia batik, using wax as the dye resist. The Dutch colonial era firm Vlisco copied the technique for mass production in the 1850s re-exporting it back to their colony where it was rejected as of poor quality. By luck for them, it became popular in West Africa because of its ‘mistakes’.

1819 100,000 independent weavers and factory-based spinners demonstrated in Manchester for political rights. Many were killed by the army and the armed bourgeoisie both unnerved by the very peacefulness of the crowd and by their black flag proclaiming LOVE.

Alice Creischer, Andreas Siekmann Andreas thinks that if you lay the bag flat, it tells a tale of parceled fields or freshly turned potato beds, of the sky above, and of the clouds, which are bigger there than anywhere. It could be that the bag had a signaling effect. Maybe the stripes were like a code that said exactly what was in the bag.

more

Crinoline Just as the crinoline craze had died down in Europe in 1875, it reached Africa. Its spread among black women with money horrified a puritan minister who “went with two elders from house to house…and we confiscated all crinoline to burn them to death before their eyes with the others joyfully laughing.”

1851 The Singer sewing machine becomes a worldwide tool both for industry and for domestic work. By 1913 the company was selling two and a half million machines per year. It gave more women their own means of production but also brought them into the realm of super-exploited work.

Boris Ondreička

more

SKINS “Possibly in no other place in the world is there so much variety in complexion and physiognomy as in Lima. From the delicately fair Creole daughter of European parents, to the jet black Congo Negro, people of every gradation of colour are seen, 18 in all according to an 19th century European traveller.”

1680 The Navajo Indians gained additional weaving skills from Pueblo Indian refugees fleeing repression after their successful uprising against colonial religious fanaticism. The Navajo acknowledged Spider Woman, who they said had taught them weaving, as a Pueblo woman. In her honour the weavers left a hole in the centre of each blanket like that of a Spider’s web.

Lukas Pusch Since the 2006 start of ‘War on Drugs’ in Mexico 45,000 deaths have occurred involving gangs, the army, and a variety of special squads. In the city of Juarez alone there were 3000 such killings in 2010. These figures are far higher than those in the occupation of Afghanistan. Violence is normalized so that the murders have become increasingly gruesome and theatrical in style.

more

Cochineal The most desired dye-stuff in a colourless Europe used to make the deepest red cloth, was a monopoly of the Spanish colonialists in Mexico despite espionage efforts to know its secrets. In the 16th century only gold had more value as a Mexican export.

1738 Wool weavers in Wiltshire, England rioted against wage reduction, which the cloth merchants said, “would not only make the poor more laborious, more diligent, more virtuous, and not at all lessen the consumption of provisions and necessaries, it would be a national blessing, and no real injury to the poor.”

Beatriz Canedo Patiño Well obviously they knew my reputation, I mean I don’t want to brag but I’ve dressed a lot of famous people. Maybe also, they knew I’d done a lot of my work with alpaca yarn even though Bolivians themselves, the upper class so to speak, they wouldn’t wear it, for them it was for their maid or their butler to wear alpaca.

more

REMIX The celebrated Navajo weavers had trouble getting red yarn, despite their success with other dyes, especially black and yellow. They solved this by unravelling the red thread from commercial wool flannel used for Spanish army blankets, and then re-used it in their own weavings.

2002 Fourteen Mecca schoolgirls trying to escape a fire at their school were forced back by members of the religious police because they were ‘not properly covered’, and were all killed.

Ruth Noack From those strange animals, – by now, I have unwrapped all and spread them out around me (a room full of aprons!) – from those strange animals, from those feathered birds emanates a story. (More likely, I am projecting onto the poor things, yet, clearly, a bond has been formed between us.) It is wrong to call them aprons, they answer to another name, old fashioned, but much more apposite: „pinafore“.

more

BLACK People of refinement, Goethe says, disliked bright colours, which were for “uncivilized nations and children”, instead wearing black for men. Despite some times being portrayed as devilish, it now signifies the cool self-discipline of the wearer.

0509 September 5th was designated 1983 in Bolivia as International Indigenous Women’s Day in honour of Aymarán military leader Bartolina Sisa Vargas and of the indispensable role played by generations of indigenous women in the 500-year struggle for decolonisation.

Juan Quispe What I understand is that culture belongs to the person who lives it. It doesn’t belong to he who stopped living. I see that there are many cultures, or many customs, that have disappeared, but, nevertheless, they say, it is ours but they don’t live it anymore. They’ve changed their ways of celebrating, their clothing, everything has changed. And where they have their past, they only have a museum, a doll dressed up, that is like that. But not in Taquile, it is still alive, it is walking. Well, Taquile in this case would be like a living museum.

more

CASHMERE Though its mass production is now centred on China, after an intermission in a Scotland far distant from the goats of Tibet, its production as a shawl was a near monopoly of the merchants of Kashmir. From the 16th century, the fleeces carried there by human load carriers with 55 kilos on their backs for three weeks over the roughest terrain.

0803 On International Women’s Day in 1917 – a Day Clara Zetkin had called for some years earlier at a meeting of International women socialists – women textile workers did a walk-out in Petrograd which prompted a city-wide strike that was directly instrumental in bringing about the fall of the Tsarist state.

Simryn Gill

more

SCARLET Despite its biblical link to the Whore of Babylon, it replaced purple as the colour for the cassocks of Roman Catholic cardinals in the 13th century. Later this then provided extremist Protestants with the material to talk of the ‘scarlet whore of Rome’ and it continued popular life as the colour of ‘loose’ women.

1907 A strike which began with the destruction of the hated company store and against ‘identification passbooks with the disciplinary history of each textile worker in Pueblo, Mexico was met with bloody repression, but was the start of a wave of empowering strikes on through the Mexican Revolution.

Ines Doujak Things then got really out of hand as her sister called for a shamanic conference in Germany. Their verdict was serious. I must send all the textiles back to the Andes or burn them on the bank of a river. I must do this, was the agreed opinion, because my life was under threat from spirits in the textiles. They did not want to be in Austria and were directing their aggression towards me.

more

PAISLEY In a shameless theft of intellectual property, this Scottish industrial town made itself synonymous with the #K# buteh #K# shawl design that had been developed in Kashmir. Using French technology – the Jacquard loom and new cloth printing techniques – its weavers also copied Parisian refinements of the Kashmiri pattern.

2007 In a typically one-sided ‘bilateral’ trade deal, Peruvian cotton farmers are set up to be wiped out by ‘free trade’ heavily subsidised USA cotton. Annual production had been around 90,000 metric tonnes in 2007. By 2010 it had fallen to 22,000.

Luis Jacobs

more

TURKEY RED This Indian labour-intensive dying process was a Holy Grail to Europeans. In an act of intellectual property theft, a comprehensive how-to guide book was published in 1763 describing how cotton, after being dyed, should be soaked in either oil of sesamum or in melted hog’s lard. It was then analyzed to re-make the process for mass production.

1967 Women sewing machinists at the Ford Motor Company struck with the demand: End Sex Discrimination In Pay Grading. They did not win all their demands but a significant pay rise and broke the idea that only men were ‘breadwinners’.

Sonia Abian

more

Colours and Textiles Devil’s Food, Silk, Bogolafini Cloth, Hats, Twill, Colour Control, Rainbow, Tartan, Brazilwood, The Triumph of Denim, Sky and Water, White, Human Hair, Purple, Yellow, Alpaca, Linen, Sheep Wool, Silver, Ultramarine, Muslin, Felt, King Cotton

Dates 1378, 1580, 1685, 1734, 1796, 1844, 1866, 1907, 1911, 1913, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2006, 2009, 2009, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 1903, 1912, 1981, 2009

Correspondents Brian Holmes, Antke Engel, Grant Watson, Nils Norman, Koyo Kouoh, Evelyn Steinthaler, Imogen Stidworthy, Tom Weibel, Ibon Aranberri, Sdenka Silva Ballón, Shoyan Shëca, Anja Kirschner / David Panos, Maria Gallindo, Hedwig Saxenhuber, Nora Izcoue / Elena Izcoue / Hugo Zumbühl, Cornelia Klinger et al

more

Velvet Roberta Orcini Landini: The Triumph of Velvet in Fabrizio de Marinus (ed) Velvet: History, Techniques, Fashions: Idea Books New York, 1994 Blue Jeans Jenny Balfour Paul: Indigo in the Arab World: Routledge, 1996 Indigo James Roberts: Narration of James Roberts, A Soldier Under George Washington, 1856, in Russ Castronovo: Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom: University of California Press,1996 Calico Woodruff D. Smith: Consumption and the Making of Respectability 1600—1800: Routledge, 2002 Negro Cloth Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man: Random House, 1952 Gold Salazar Bondy: Ballad of Cuzco in Poesia Quechua: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1947 Acryl Elayne Zorn: Dressed to Kill in Regina A. Root (ed): Latin American Fashion Read- er: Berg, 2005 Camouflage Jean Cocteau, Margaret Crosland: Cocteau‘s world: an anthology of writings: Owen, 1972; Yoruba Spell Against the Enemy in Rogelio Martinez Fivee (ed): Poesia anónima Africana in Eduardo Galeano: Memory of Fire, I. Genesis: Pantheon Books New York, 1985 Grey Vincent van Gogh ́s letter to his brother Theo in David Batchelor: Colour: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2008 Feathers Charles Waterton, Rev. J. G. Wood (ed): Wanderings in South America: The North-West of the United States and the Antilles, in the Years 1812, 1816, 1820 & 1824: With Original Instructions for the Perfect Preservation of Birds, Etc., for Cabinets of Nat- ural History: Hippocrene Books NY, 1983; Lee Ann Wilson: Nature v. Cultur: The image of the Uncivilized Wild-Man in Textiles from the Department of Cuzco, Peru in Margot Blum Schevill, Edward B. Dwyer, -Janet Catherine Berlo (ed): Textile Traditions Of Mesoamerica And The Andes: Garland Publishing, 1991 Crinoline Pat Earnshaw: Lace in Fashion: Batsford 1985; Robert Ross: Global Clothing: A History, or The Imperialist’s New Clothes: Polity, 2008 Berafula Cloth Collen E. Kriger: Mapping the History of Cotton Textile Pro- duction in pre-colonial West Africa: African Economic History No 33 (2005) Lace Pat Earnshaw: Lace in Fashion: Batsford, 1985; Juan, Jorge and Antonio de Ulloa: Noticias secretas de America (siglo XVIII) 2 Volumes Madrid: Editoria América 1918; and in Theory and Practice of Commerce and Maritime Affairs, Don Gerónimo de Uztáriz (London 1751 J&J Rivington); both in Dilys E. Blum in Textiles in Colonial Latin America in “The Arts in Latin America 1492—1820“: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2006; Elena Phipps: Cumbi to Tapestry in The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork 1530—1830: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004 Cashmere The Kashmir Shawl and Beyond: Janet Rizvi with Monisha Ahmed: MARG Publications 2009 Turkey Red Sarah Lowengrand: The Creation of Colour in 18th century Europe. Edward Bancroft: Experimental Researches Concerning the Philosophy of Permanent Colours: Volume II 1794 updat- ed 1813: Guillaune Mazéas: Reserche sur la Cuse Physique de l’Adherence de la Couleur Rouge aux Toiles, Pientes qui Nous Viennent des Côtes de Malabar et de Coromandel Remix Roberta Orsini Landini: The Triumph of Velvet: Janet Catherine Berlo: Beyond Brico- lage in Textile Traditions of Mesoamerica and the Andes: edited Margot Blum Schevill and others. Ticio Escobar: Issues in Popular Art, in Beyond the Fantastic: Iniva London 1995. Anne-Marie Boutteaux: The Porosity of Objects, in Fetish Modernity: pub Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium 

1780 Eduardo Galeano: Faces and Masks: Volume II of Memory of Fire: Norton, 1998; Juan, Jorge and Antonio de Ulloa: Noticias secretas de America (siglo XVIII) 2 Volumes Madrid: Editoria América, 1918 1795 Prasannan Parthavasarathi: The Transition to a Colo- nial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India 1720—1800: Cambridge University Press, 2001 1819 E.P. Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class: Victor Gollancz 1963 1859 Dinabandhu Mitra: Nil Darpan or The Indigo Planting Mirror: 1859. Translated by Michael Madhusudan Dutt, edited by Sudhi Pradhan and Sailesh Se Gupta: Calcutta: Paschimbanga Natya Academy, 1997 1904 Andrew Zimmerman: Alabama in Africa, Booker T. Washington, the German Empire and the Globalization of the New South: Princeton University Press, 2007 1907 John Lear: Labor Regime Change in the Mexican Revolution 1917 Mahatma Ghandi: The Story of My Experiments With the Truth, Navjivan 1925—9 in Collected works: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1970 1932 Jeffrey J. Rossman: Worker Resistance Under Stalin: class and revolt on the factory floor: Harvard University Press, 2005 1944 Aranda and Escalante, 1978, in Marisol de la Cadena Indigenous Mestizos: the Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru 1919—91: Duke University Press, 2009 0208 Guiseppe Campuzano: Museo Travesti del Perú, 2008; Flora Tristan: Peregrinations of a Pariah 1833—4: Virago Travellers, 1986 

more

Ines Doujak researches, writes, teaches as an artist in the areas of visual culture and material aesthetics with a queer-feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial focus. She is the project leader of “Loomshuttles / Warpaths”.

John Barker is a novelist who has also published extensively on political economy, labour process and the structure and misuses of language and metaphor for the journals `Science as Culture, Capital and Class, Mute and Variant`. His role in this project has been a mixture of research, writing and editing.

Helga Weber Is the muse and technician of the project. She is responsible for the archiving, the documentation and is assisting in development and production of the images.

Markus Wörgötter is a photographer, graphic-designer and artist. Lives in Vienna.

Cordula Daus is a cultural scientist and author. She was editor in the team of the docu- menta 12 magazines. Since 2009 she is investigating in the relations between places and words, acts of speech and their consequences in the frame of the “Neue Gesellschaft für Angewandte Toponymie”.

Alice Creischer, geboren 1960 in Gerolstein, studierte in Düsseldorf Philosophie / Ger- manistik und Kunst. Kuratorin, und Künstlerin, lebt in Berlin. Letztes Projekt (gemeinsam mit Andras Siekmann und Max Jorge Hinderer): Principio Potosí, (Reina Sofia Madrid 2010, Haus der Kulturen der WElt (2010) und Museo Nacional de Art La Paz (2011), letzte Ausstellung Das Etablissment der Tatsachen, KOW Galerie, Berlin 2012

Andreas Siekmann, geboren 1961 in Hamm, studierte in Düsseldorf Kunst. Kurator und Künstler, lebt in Berlin. Letztes Projekt (gemeinsam mit Alice Creischer und Max Jorge Hinderer): Principio Potosí, (Reina Sofia Madrid 2010, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2010) und Museo Nacional de Art La Paz (2011), letzte Ausstellungsbeteiligung: Vor dem Gesetz, Museum Ludwig Köln 2011 / 2012 David Riff is an art critic, artist, curator, translator, and member of Chto delat. Lives in Moscow and Berlin.

Fahim Amir, Viennese philosopher with Afghan origins, works at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Recent publications include “Dwellers and Strayers: Multispecies Criminality in Postcolonial Worlds“ and “1000 Habitats: Warm Wars and Tiny Architects“.

Waldo Jordan began in the 1970‘s to rescue the ethno-technologies, meanings and communication elements related to traditional Andean weaving. He is director and founder of the Museo de Textiles Andinos Bolivianos in La Paz, Bolivia.

Cristina Bubba organized Aymará Indians in the area of Coroma to identify, catalog and recover communally-owned ceremonial weavings, that have been stolen or sold to dealers who illegally traffic in these weavings throughout the world. Trained as a social psychologist she studied under Cornell University professor of anthropology, John Murra, who is one of the first academics to study the cultural importance of Andean textiles.

Irene Silverblatt teaches Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, USA. She studies relations of culture and power in the Andes and contemporary Europe. She has written, Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru; Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized World.

Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz works as indipendent editor, researcher and curator. Together with Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann he curated the exhibition and publication project “Principio Potosí / The Potosí Principle“ (MNCARS Madrid, HKW Berlin and MNA/ MUSEF La Paz, 2010—2011).

Simon Sheikh is a freelance curator and critic. He is a researcher for the on-going Former West project, initiated by BAK in Utrecht. Beginning September 2012, Sheikh is a Senior Lecturer in Curating at Goldsmiths College, London.

Catherine Lord, Professor of Studio Art at the University of California. She is an artist, fiction writer and critical essayist. Currently she is working on text/image project titled, The Effect of Tropical Light on White Men.

Guiseppe Campuzano, the Peruvian artist, philosopher and crossdresser is the founder of the ́Museo de Travesti`in Lima.

Beatriz Canedo Patiño The Bolivian fashion designer was named by the International press as “The Queen of the Alpaca”. Her world-known creativity leads her to dress European and Asian Royalty, high political authorities in Bolivia and abroad, business leaders, and celebrities. www.beatrizcanedopatino.com

Judith Fischer, lives in Vienna as an artist, philosopher and lecturer in the fields of (horror) film, visual art, literature, liminality and theory. Her latest publications include: Judith Fischer: Reading the Hidden, Writing the Liminal, p. 30—43, in: Andrei Siclodi (Ed.): Private Investigations—Paths of Critical Knowledge Production in Contemporary Art. Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, 2011 and the artist book Judith Fischer: some. women houses phantoms, Schlebrügge Editor, Vienna 2010.

Boris Ondreicˇ ka (1969) is an artist, curator and author, former director of tranzit.sk, based in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. Amongst many he has co-curated Manifesta 8 and The Event 2011, and has exhibited his works at Venice, Prague, Gyumri, Torino biennales, Manifesta 2, Badischer, Koelnischer, Frankfurter Kunstvereins, Secession, Mumok, TBA21, Belvedere in Vienna, Magazin 4 Bregenz, PS1 NYC, Le Plateau Paris, Kiasma Helsinki, De Appel Amsterdam, Bak Utrecht and many others.

Jens Risch 1973 born in Rudolstadt/Thüringen; 1993—1995 HfG Offenbach am Main; 1995—1999 Städel, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Frankfurt am Main, in the class of Thomas Bayrle; since 2001 in Berlin. Thomas Kilpper 1956 born in Stuttgart, lives Berlin, Germany; studied Fine Arts at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Nuernberg, Duesseldorf and Städelschool, Frankfurt on Main (Professor Georg Herold). Since 2006 together with Franziska Böhmer he runs the not for profit project space after the butcher.

Lukas Pusch, lives and works in Vienna, studied painting in Vienna, Moscow and Dresden. Founder of the “White Cube Gallery Novosibirsk“, the first center of contemporary art in Siberia and “SLUM-TV“ in Mathare, one of the biggest slums in Africa.

Simryn Gill, born in Singapore, lives and works in Sydney Australia and Port Dickson, Malaysia.

Juan Quispe is a resident of the island of Taquile, Lake Titicaca, Peru. He is a storyteller, who works as a farme and cap-knitter.

Shooshie Sulaiman was born in 1973 in Malaysia. She received Bachelor of Fine Art from MARA University of Technology. Her art varies from drawings, collages, architec- tural installations, to performance art. Recent exhibitions include in Art Stage Singapore 2012 (Singapore), 6th Asia Pacific Triennial 2009 (Brisbane, Australia), and Documenta 12, 2007 (Kassel, Germany). She also curates exhibitions and runs 12, an alternative art space in Kuala Lumpur.

Sonia Abian’s work starts with a visit to archives and research. In whatever medium – video, painting, object, installation – she analyses discourses and historical pictures as vehicles of an ideology. Her special interest is in the power structures demonstrated in these pictures through the legitimisation of specific gender positions and their current relevance. She was born in Argentina in 1966. Luis Jacob was born in Lima, Peru in 1971, and currently lives in Toronto, Canada. Working as artist, curator, and writer, his diverse practice addresses issues of social interaction and the subjectivity of aesthetic experience. Recent exhibitions of his work include: A finger in the pie, A foot in the door, A leg in quicksand, Kunsthalle Lingen (Germany); Pictures at an Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (Toronto).

Ruth Noack is Head of Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art in London. Trained as visual artist and art historian, she has acted as art critic, university lecturer and exhibitionmaker since the 1990s. She was Curator of documenta 12 (Kassel 2007). She provided ‘Garden of Learning’ (Busan Biennale, 2012) with its exhibition layout, and is presently working on a show called ‘Sleeping with a vengeance — dreaming of a life’.

more