Among the artifacts crafted by humankind, textiles have always held a uniquely interdependent relationship with the environment. Textiles derive from vegetal (hemp, raffia, ramie, cotton, or bark cloth), animal (wool, silk) and even mineral origins (as in the case of asbestos fibers). The production of textiles has depended upon access to and the processing of raw materials, while cloth manufacturing has reshaped entire landscapes from the transplantation of mulberry trees for sericulture to the mounds of murex shells discarded after the extraction of Tyrian purple dye. Textile patterns abound with imagery of flora and fauna, while fabrics have come to shape myths and metaphors of the natural world. Textiles have connected distant regions, but they have also been responsible for and complicit in the enslavement of human beings and the exploitation of agricultural, artisanal, and industrial labor. Textile production has led to the despoliation of landscapes and water resources, often in unequal ways that resulted from colonialism and environmental racism. Despite the recent concern with historical legacies of environmental harm, the field of ecological humanities has mostly neglected the textile realm. This online conference considers the relationship between textiles and the environment and brings together scholars, artists, and cultural practitioners who grapple with the aesthetic dimensions, ecological conditions, and the past, present, and potential futures of cloth.

An online conference at Leuphana University Lüneburg, February 5-7, 2025

organized by Sylvia Houghteling (Bryn Mawr College) and Vera-Simone Schulz (Leuphana University Lüneburg / KHI Florenz)

All times given in Central European Time CET (Amsterdam/Berlin/Rome, GMT +1)

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

3-3:30 pm Sylvia Houghteling (Bryn Mawr College) and Vera-Simone Schulz (Leuphana University Lüneburg / KHI Florenz): Welcome and Introduction

Session I: Matter and Materials

Chair: Janet Purdy (Art Institute of Chicago)

3:30 pm Deborah Jeromin (Leipzig): Parachutesilk

4:00 pm Bellinda Widmann Kambili (Leuphana University Lüneburg): ‘African Wild Silk’: Waste Silk Supplement, Discourse, and Material, 1895-1932

4:30 pm Airin Farahmand (Radboud University): Polyester: A Genealogy of Comfort in the Fashion Industry

5:00 pm BREAK (30 minutes)

Session II: Collectivity and Ecology

Chair: Sylvia Houghteling (Bryn Mawr College)

5:30 pm Antonia Behan (Queen’s University): Net Works: Global Handweaving Revival and Ecology in the Interwar Period

6:00 pm Juan Carlos Guerrero-Hernández (University of Nevada, Reno): Textiles, Ecology, and Resistance in Encoded Textiles’ Makuñ

6:30 pm Katrin Seiler and Alexandra Weigand (Plantae Institute): Healing Textiles – Toward New Human-Plant Collaborations

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Session III: Textile-Human-Relationships

Chair: Carolyn Wargula (Bucknell University)

2:30 pm Yongxin Kong (Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts): From Trash to Treasure: The Circulation of Human Hair in Textile Art

3:00 pm Magdalena Furmaniuk (University of National Education Commission, Kraków): The Matter from a Matter: Contemporary Artistic Gathering as a Form of Textile Object Creation

3:30 pm BREAK (30 minutes)

Session IV: Seas of Cloth

Chair: Dipti Khera (New York University)

4:00 pm Rajarshi Sengupta (Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur): Nachu, Floating Seaweeds of Machilipatnam: On Ecology and Signature Style

4:30 pm Maura Coughlin (Northeastern University) and Cécile Borne (Brittany): Stories of Salvage on the Brittany Coast

5:00 pm BREAK (30 minutes)

Session V: Textiles in Relation to the Earth and Oceans

Chair: Vera-Simone Schulz (Leuphana University Lüneburg / KHI Florenz)

5:30 pm Zakiyyah Haffejee (Cape Town): Indigo Waves: Intercontinental Textile Narratives

6:00 pm Sandrine Colard (Rutgers University) and Giulia Paoletti (University of Virginia): Textured Images: An Ecology of Textiles and Threads in African Photography

Friday, February 7, 2025

Session VI: Textiles, Cultural and Ecological Heritage

Chair: Nicholas Robbins (UCL)

2:30 pm Yang You (Shanghai): Can Textiles Patch the Sky They Burnt? Yin Xiuzhen’s Sky Puzzle (2015)

3:00 pm Jessica Gerschultz (St Andrews): “Upcycled Blues”: Collective Quilting on Tripoli’s Syria Street

3:30 BREAK (30 minutes)

Session VII: Matter and Ornament

Chair: Sarah Fee (University of Toronto / Royal Ontario Museum)

4:00 pm Maria Gajewska (University of Cambridge): Mad for Madder: A Dye that Crossed the Ocean

4:30 pm Jennifer Konrad (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz): The Power of Textiles: The Landscape Dress of Elector John George I of Saxony as an Economic Symbol of his Territorial and Socio-Cultural Wealth

5:00 pm BREAK (30 minutes)

Session VIII: Textiles, Sustainability, and Memory

Chair: Mei Mei Rado (Bard Graduate Center)

5:30 pm Rabiu Yusuf (Ahmadu Bello University): Dyed in Tradition and Sustainability: Unraveling the Intersection of Textile Production and Ecological Practices in Bunkure, Kano, Nigeria

6:00 pm Anooradha Siddiqi (Barnard College): Kandyan Ecologies, Kandyan Style: Sri Lankan Craft and the ‘Asian’ Episteme

6:30 pm Inês Jorge (University of Birmingham): ‘Cloth Travels’: Journeys of Fabrics Across the Portuguese City of Guimarães in Ann Hamilton’s Side-by-Side Installation for the Contextile Biennial (2018)

7:00 pm Sylvia Houghteling (Bryn Mawr College) and Vera-Simone Schulz (Leuphana University Lüneburg / KHI Florenz): Final Discussion

Further information: https://www.leuphana.de/institute/ipk/aktuell/termine/ansicht/2025/02/05/textile-ecologies.html

Please register here for free online participation:

https://eu02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/UloVZmLBTJaJGv3R12zTTA#/registration