Yoo-hoo! I’m still here: Greetings from the Abyss

I want to hear women bark
I want to hear them spit, growl, howl and talk
I want to hear the depth of their voices, their deep throats
I want to hear dark sounds from bellies and bones
I want to hear a smoky voice, full voice, deep screams and rumbling
I want to hear many women together
I want to hear their voices in unison
I want to hear a thousand women roar and scream
Their voices becoming a rumbling dark thunder
A thousand rumbling women

I want to go out into the dark
I want to leave my house and go out
I want the darkness to engulf me
I want the night to be dark, black, blue, silent and very very deep
I want my eyes to get used to the darkness
I want my eyes to be wide open
I want all the blue light of the night to fill my eyes
I want the darkness to enter my wide pupils, my retina, to pierce my skull, to enter my body through my wide open holes
I am wide open

I want to touch
I want to touch the world around me
I want to stick my finger deep into the ground
I want to pierce the layers of dirt with my hand
I want my hand to be dirty
I want the dirt to reach far up my arm
I want my whole arm deep into the soil
I want the waters and moist of the earth on my skin

I don’t want to leave any traces
I don’t want to leave any threads
I don’t want my footprints to stiffen, solidify like concrete and leave hardened wounds in the earth
I don’t want my body to dry out,
Stiffen like dead stick and leave painful stings every time you try to move
I don’t want my thoughts and ego to be swirling around like ghosts never ready to leave
I don’t want my stories to never change

I want to be a roar
I want to be a dark rumbling roar full of life
A roar that comes from deep in my throat, from the depth of my belly
A dark scream from deep inside
A rumble from a deep, moist, dark crack or cave
And there will be no echo

‘Yoo-hoo! I’m still here: Greetings from the Abyss’ is a textile work and a poem. The work consists of two handwoven textiles hung freely in space, with an image that stretches over both of the textiles, and a poem presented in a sound piece or as printed text.

In archaeology a twisted fibre is a rare find, and is already considered a textile because everything starts with a thread. Textiles are not only absent as material relics in history and archaeology, but its labour is also largely invisible. Elizabeth Fisher’s carrier bag theory proposes that the first cultural device was a container, like a braided net, to collect things in. The twisted fibre is a thread, a net, a basket, a bag, to carry food, game, tools and children in. Ursula K. Le Guin and her follow up essay the ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’, connects storytelling to this theory and she points out that the braided net and the gatherer filling it up, does not make for a great story because it has no hero or action in it. The maker, the gatherer, the bag and its content is not an invisible story, but a secondary one. It is a backdrop in the story of the spear user, hunter, warrior hero and great action.

‘Yoo-hoo! I’m still here: Greetings from the Abyss’ is a greeting from the secondary story. The work is both tangible textiles and an intangible sound. It is a backdrop as a dark, deep and oceanic abyss yoo-hooing at us. The poem is both a longing for a powerful, loud and screaming women’s voice and at the same time a desire to tread lightly on earth while leaving as little traces as possible. It is a greeting from the petrified twisted fibre and the hands that made it.

Depth deeper very deep dark turn off the lights then you can see what is hidden from sight.

Part of the exhibition, I want to Belong to The Living, with Anna Hillbom and Ann-Catrin Olsson at Kunsthalle Turku.

Long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long breath lung long ago.

Part of the exhibition, I want to Belong to The Living, with Anna Hillbom and Ann-Catrin Olsson at Kunsthalle Turku.

“Submerged” (2021), handwritten text and handwoven textile, plain weave, linen, textile ink, 15 cm x various lengths from 6 – 30 meters. Installed at Amsterdam University Hospital, location AMC.

In my ear I have sleeping cells from long ago that were developed to listen to sound under water. I am also a fish, a sponge, a cell. I am many things and many times.

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“Submerged” (2021), handwritten text and handwoven textile, plain weave, linen, textile ink, 15 cm x various lengths from 6 – 30 meters. Installed at Amsterdam University Hospital, location AMC.

Long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long breath lung long ago.

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“Layers of Memory” (2019), handwoven textile, linen 85 cm x 650 cm, words, vinyl cut lettering, 85 cm x 450-650 cm. Typesetting by Nina Serebrenick.

Lay down on layers of earth, layers of dust, layers of sand, layers of peat, layers of roots, layers of clay, layers of decay, layers of minerals, layers of gas, layers of oil, layers of waste, layers of water, layers of stone, layers of bone, layers of bodies, layers of memory, layers of guilt, layers of ash, layers of magma, layers of heat, layers of snow, layers of ice, layers of darkness, layers of shadow, layers of ghosts, layers of secrets, layers of death, layers of history, layers of footprints, layers of traces, layers of thread, layers of time.

Part of the exhibition, I want to Belong to The Living, with Anna Hillbom and Ann-Catrin Olsson at PuntWG in Amsterdam.

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“Layers of Traces” (2019), handwoven textile, linen, 36 cm x 180 cm, ceramic pieces, various size. Collaboration with potter and artist Herman Verhagen. 

Part of the exhibition, I want to Belong to The Living, with Anna Hillbom and Ann-Catrin Olsson at PuntWG in Amsterdam.

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“Layers of Stone” (2019), mono-print of handwoven textiles on paper, 45 x 65 cm.

‘Layers of Traces’, ‘Layers of Stone’ and ‘Layers of Memory’ are three separate works made with traces of textiles. The works consist of prints made in negative, like a shadow of textiles that are now absent, ceramic sculptures covered in imprints of textile and a text on the wall in square nylon letters like the interlacing grids of vertical and horizontal threads.

Textiles, usually made from fragile organic materials do not last long. Because of this we can often only access a secondary history, where the traces of textiles are caught in another material. Could this be part of the reason the history of textile and its creators, usually women, is often overlooked?

The inspiration behind these works are archaeological finds where residue of textiles and textile production are found in durable materials like pottery, tools and rusted metal adornments. For this project I specifically looked at Neolithic ceramic artefacts decorated with imprints of ropes and textiles (European Corded Ware culture), 20.000 year old negative impressions of perished fibre works from Dolní Věstonice (archaeological site in Czech Republic) and textile imprints found on metal tools and brooches from Danish Iron Age grave finds. In the works I look carefully at these traces and experiment with their role as witnesses to textiles that have over time decomposed and are now absent. With objects and prints the works reactivate the human gestures petrified in these traces.

3 2 1 zero and beyond. Time is irrelevant! 1 billion years ago I emerged from darkness. Wet skin, damp skin and then dry from the sun. Two legs I walked the earth, the sea was no longer my home. What kind of home sickness do I feel from a home I can never return to? A child is still born out of water. The hissing sound, ”ssssssh”, calms us because it reminds us of the sound we hear when we are floating on our mothers water. Mother earths belly is our deep seas. In my deep unconscious I can feel her. Deep, dark, moist, wet, no light. Is it a longing? I don’t think so. More like an emergence, a source of thought. Consciousness, I don’t know. Never to forget. Remember. Remember when you were floating. Light glimmers. I have never been very deep in the waters. Or have I? My ancestors so far back that they were fish. Fish ancestors. Slippery, slimy living in the slam and mud. No hands, no feet. What were you thinking, getting out of there?

“3 2 1 zero and beyond” (2017), mono-print on textile, 260 x 380 cm. Solo exhibition at Lokaal 1b, Amsterdam.

To dare to listen. Listen dear. Inner ear. Is it words we are talking about? Words, worlds. In another language, where ”to name” (something) also means ”to shatter” (something). Shatter to pieces or shatter the unspeakable! You know, I think. Shatter to pieces, destroying cultures. Pieces like sawdust, floating in the sea, taken by the wind. Like seeds they will sprout somewhere else. If you die hard enough you will become alive again. Or? Becoming dark. Seeds die and become something from memory. Memory seeds. Seeds of memory named and shattered, spread out to sprout again somewhere else. To listen to the wind, whatever, cliché. What happens if we shatter the world? Big bang, dust glimmering because they are stars. Big ball of sawdust, dust-ball, really big cloud of dust. Just, to do it all over again. Blessed be the west, destroying cultures and making it alive again. The way we treat nature = the way we treat culture? I don’t know. I’m just a dreamer. No, not romantic enough to be a dreamer. The dream of the earth. To dare to listen. I dare me to listen. Me dare you to listen. Listen to what? Are we talking, ooops! Are we listening to sounds? Stop talking.

“3 2 1 zero and beyond” (2017), mono-print on textile, 120 x 750 cm. Solo exhibition at Lokaal 1b, Amsterdam.