Obol Le

Obol Le El Lobo
weaving sounds on stage with Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti, Amsterdam 2016

Report on OBOL LE - Weaving Song

Threading The Loom
Alhough we agreed to use the full rainbow of the yarns I brought, I was undecided about how to divide the colours in the weft. This decision had to be made before the concerts but I could not do it remotely in my own studio. I had to be there with the music to tune in to the concentration of the band. Threading the loom with live music was like jumping through a silk paper loop. Just like you can kiss someone simply once for the first time, there was one first encounter with the music of Obol Le and me. That was during the run before the premiere. Beforehand in the studio I had heard some sounds the music was going to be made of. What I heard reminded me of Engelse Drop (liqorice all sorts), colourful, concrete, buoyant as in flexible. It felt like layers of toffee Fender embracing the warm probes of a curious Wurlitzer exploring a rollercoaster.

Apart from weaving of the songs which I came to do, the sounds were visualised by a projection on the wall. Harpo, the projection wizard, used an algorithm and three parameters: pitch, relative volume and noise. The result was colors appearing sideways from a vertical middle source, both left and right. As if the middle line was a mirror. According to the dictionary an algorithm is a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations (especially by a computer).

What algorithm does the weaver use? What color is zero in color spectrum... beamer blue? The quest of looking for a standard to depart from reminds me of the question of my favorite Vedic character Gargi, entering a philosophic tournament with the question: If the waters are the weft on which all things are woven, on what weft are woven the waters?

Rather than an ultrasonic fairytale where colours represent individual sounds paired by the wavelength they have in common, I preferred the key to be subjective concentration. And a bit more than that, because it is not anymore about what I like or think but becoming one with my element and becoming part of the tool to tune in with the silent force. 
More important than choosing colours is figuring out which colours go side by side. This occured to me dozing off while watching a landscape from the train in France. Apparently that is why I spend fortunes to travel by train. If I had a real fortune I would spend it on travelling to lake Titiqaqa to see the sky reflected in the water at sunset, producing a mirrored image with the colours Bolivian textiles are known for. This Bolivian prism was the solution to thread the loom using all colours of the spectrum without producing a twisted tartan.

Releasing Patterns
I met Jochem from the band in the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam in the Seth Siegelaub exhibition. Seth Siegelaub stood at the cradle of conceptual art in the sixties and sold this in his gallery together with oriental rugs. Apart from his share in conceptual art in the Stedelijk his collection of old textiles was on display. First thing I mentioned in the brief conversation with Jochem was that I missed Shipibo cloth in the collection.
These are textiles embroidered by the Peruvian Shipibo tribe. It is common for shamans in their tradition to heal people by song. Patterns of song are similar to body energy. By singing songs to a patient with disturbed patterns the body energy can be restored. These song patterns are embroidered onto the Shipibo cloth .
This makes me wonder whether I can release behavioural patterns by visualising them in textile. Jochem mentions he is in a band and they are busy with this same topic. They are looking for a weaver to visualise the songs on stage. I was definitely up for playing the Penelope 76, so I was glad to became their 6th band member.

Gifts
I felt gifted. Just two weeks before my good friend Joseph has given me two looms he found at the salvation army in the French Alps. A box with yarn had been thrown into my lap by a friend who knew I am into textiles. To be able to cut the yarn I bring the tailoring scissors inherited from Tante Willy, my neighbor who used to babysit me as a kid and worked as a tailor. It produced rusty screeks and added a decisive metal strike to the soundscape of the concert.

That Ugly Light Line In The Middle
To be honest in the darkness alternated by filtered stage lights I couldn’t distinguish the yarns from each other any longer. I placed the cones in the order of the rainbow and algorithmically selected yarns to warp into the weft. I wove about 20 cm each night in the same mirror like Bolivian prism wave as I threaded the loom. At some point I decided to tie the yarn together when changing colour to synchronise the continuation of the thread with the timeline of the event. Like a golden record we frame the woven meter concert concentrate.

Audience members came to see the result of a shows weaving up close. Although everyone of us wears garments from woven textiles, some of us only realised after the concert how this surface comes into existence. I understand weaving as an activity to enter a space and to offer a space. I spent time in that space when partaking in medicine ceremony, that is where I discovered the Shipibo cloth with the embroidered songlines. When experiencing the hallucinogenic effect of the south american jungle brew I realised I had been in that space many times, behind the sewing machine, the knitting machine, cutting through fabrics to turn surfaces into volumes.

Carry The Sound Space
The records I listen to when working in this space, behind these devices, with these colors and shapes and inherited scissors, carry the solutions I found. When I hear them again I remember the choices I made and the solutions I found. To work with live music was such a treat, no turning over of records for once. Every thread I cut, every knot I tied, I felt very conscious.

Reflections
Ibelisse, the iniatior of the band and the project and Bolivian herself explained how in Bolivian weaving there is a mirror. The surface between the upper world and the under world. Sirens inhabit this surface and function as gatekeepers, guiding travellers between the two worlds. I figured I had been weaving that line. I want to pick that mirror up and turn it sideways. This piece of weaving is that turn we took on the journey.
I am curious to forget about all of these intentions and to frame woven song as the visual outcome of the project. I wonder if people who look at this textile can sense these intentions. The moment the surface becomes that mirror, that interface, the concentration releases.
For myself, to retrieve my own idea in the outcome of the work as if I just had it. That is the visual outcome as a mirror in time.

Obol Le
2016
Het Veem Theater - Dokhuis Gallerie, Amsterdam
silk yarn
100 CM x 80 CM

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