Panel Statement
Panel: Playing for Keeps: Social Empowerment Through Physically Interactive Artworks
This is about a temporary assembly (Lindström and Ståhl 2010) that we call Threads – a mobile sewing circle. Threads is a travelling exhibition and workshop where participants are invited to gather for a day and to, among other things, embroider SMS, by hand and with an embroidery machine connected to a mobile phone. This invitation, to engage with various materials, technologies, stories and practices, can also be seen as an invitation to share concerns, desires, and memories in relation to old and new as well as physical and digital means of communication. What characterizes this temporary assembly is partly that its boundaries are vague and moving. Each time it is assembled, it looks and works a little bit different. We suggest that trough our design that allows for design-after-design (Ehn 2008) we make it possible for the participants to add, alter and change parts and practices of Threads. This continuous relational reordering of things, can at times be frustrating and stressful since it involves uncertainty. We do however argue that this fluid (de Laet and Mol 2000) character is most of all a good thing, since it allows Threads to become closely entangled in the participants’ everyday lives and thereby starts mattering (Lindström and Ståhl 2011).
- Åsa Ståhl is a PhD student in Media and Communication studies at the School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University. She holds an MA in Radio from Goldsmiths, London. Her artistic and academic collaboration with Kristina Lindström started off at the IT-research institute Interactive Institute and was further developed when they recieved artistic development funds from Swedish Research Council (2006-07). At the moment the two are doing a collaborative PhD-project. Åsa has exhibited her artwork in Europe, Asia and the America and also publishes journalistic material in print and broadcast.
- Kristina Lindström is a PhD-student in Interaction design at the School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University. Her artistic and academic collaboration with Kristina Lindström started off at the IT-research institute Interactive Institute and was further developed when they recieved artistic development funds from Swedish Research Council (2006-07). At the moment the two are doing a collaborative PhD-project. Kristina has exhibited her artwork in Europe, Asia and the America.