klik hier voor de catalogus

OVER DE TENTOONSTELLING

Horizons
In de pruimentijd zijn de horizons tentoongesteld die Janneke in de afgelopen 8 jaar heeft geweven op verschillende lokaties, van het theater tot de Spaanse kust en het Markermeer tijdens de pandemie.De waarde van het weven van de horizon voor Janneke is het vinden van een plek op de aarde.
De horizon, de gezichtseinder, is het verst dat je de aarde kunt zien voordat je de ruimte in kijkt. Het is een lijn die even denkbeeldig als waarneembaar is. Gedachten die opdoemen tijdens dit handwerk op de grens van het conceptuele deelt ze in teksten: bijvoorbeeld over de waarde van weven in de huidige westerse economie, over weven in metaforen in het Vedische India en over het denken zelf.

Edelroest
De horizons zijn vergezeld door ingelijst patina. Als iets meer waard wordt ondanks dat het uit elkaar valt, ontwikkelt het patina. Zoals metaal blootgesteld aan lucht en vocht een laag corrosie ontwikkelt en oude schilderijen in waarde stijgen door de barstjes in het vernis, waardeert Janneke de bezielde waarde van doorleefd textiel.
Een theedoek waarin Janneke de ruitjes opnieuw rangschikte zodat er een ruimte in perspectief ontstond in het grid, werd door de loodgieter gebruikt om het smeer aan af te vegen en verloor de samenhang in de was. Ingelijst lijkt het of door de gaten het licht naar binnen straalt.

There is a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in
Leonhard Cohen

Ze weerstond de routine om na een bezwete dansavond de trui met haar lichaamsafdruk in bodypaint in de was te doen en ze omarmt de verschillende manieren waarop sokken patina verwerven, tijdens een auto-ongeluk, in een kunstatelier of gedurende een regenachtige Rainbow Gathering in Polen.

scroll naar beneden voor meer informatie over het weven:

begeleide meditatie over de vraag van Gargi

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.

Het Veem Theater Amsterdam
2015
silk yarn

Worpswede
2016
silk yarn

Hermit Shelter Weaving reflections during the 2020 Lockdown “If the world is woven on the weft of the waters, on what weft are woven the waters?” During the first covid-lockdown in the spring of 2020 I was weaving on the waters herselves. As I read in a book named Ka apsaras, water, is considered plural and feminine. From the boat who carries my nickname, the Jannie, I watched the horizon. The waters mirror the skies. Inspired by the colourful blankets woven according to the horizons of lake Titiqaqa in the Andes, I started to weave the twofold view daily. The pattern on the blankets show a series of colourful mirroring patterns: the Markermeer waters reflecting the skies with a line in between, the horizon. Every day I spent at the boat, I wove a horizon. The resulting textile is a record of the 2020 spring lockdown. I recorded the reflections that emerged accordingly and bundled them here loosely into text. Text and textile share a root in ancient Greek, the woven structure of a narrative sprout from it. The quote is from a book I keep reading and rereading, Ka by Roberto Calasso. In it I find metaphors based on textile, together with bricks, one of the early humanmade ways te create shelter. Bricks and textile strike me as very useful materials to express tensions and tendencies to be felt within and without. “If the world is woven on the weft of the waters, on what weft are woven the waters?” This question is asked by a female philosopher from the Vedic times, the India of 3000 years ago. Her name is Gargi, she asks this question within the frame of a tournament, the way philosophy was practiced at the time. The warp is the set of threads that are stretched lengthwise into the loom. The weft is the thread that gets woven sideways into the warp. Exploring the grid being both supportive and supported, Gargi challenges the wise on the understanding of understanding. This is what I gather when the notion of Brahman is discussed, a topic that never seems to cool down; the nature of consciousness. The loom was a gift from a friend who calls me Jannie. The warp is the horizon on the day I threaded the loom. The weft would be weaving horizons into this set of coloured lines. “It will result in a crazy tartan”, suggested Alex the Scottish painter who lives on the boat. We found ourselves in the beginning of a love relationship and called each other Lockdown Lovers. Now I framed the woven record I think the checked pattern says more about the grid of the loom than about the horizon, but it still is an interesting thought experiment to imagine Scottish horizons from a boat. In this corner of the world, the Netherlands, the purpose of weaving is not to create shelter. It costs less money to buy clothes than to make them, let alone to weave the fabric. My weave will not be a shelter for my body, neither by way of clothes nor as a tent. It will not be a sail for a boat either. Consider my weave imperfect. The silk yarn, another collection of leftovers, is too thin for the loom to create a solid surface. It doesn`t tie closer together than a loose mesh. A loose mesh, I read in Ka, is sampad, a metaphor to understand equivalences. In a battle with Death, the understanding that equivalences will not die when he does lead Father Time to victory. I try to feel dismissed to wrap my head around every single thing. In quarantine time I think it is extremely important to occupy myself with the utterly superfluous. Weaving is one step towards understanding what a grid is and can do. I enjoy running a program for my hands, while both my mind and my body can feel rhythm. To me weaving functions as a gate into the realm of the abstract. I find it interesting the word abstract refers to an idea abstracted from form. I understand this realm to be a source predating any from. Looking Brahman up in the laptop dictionary I find: “the ultimate reality underlying all phenomena in the Hindu scriptures: Brahman is formless but is the birthplace of all forms in visible reality.” Gargi is known to be dressed in garments of the most beautiful colours, woven by herself. One wonders about Gargi: Whether she weaves as a pastime for thinking or is she thinking as a pastime for weaving. Choosing between these two answers seems like embracing time as a linear phenomenon to me. This is a comfortable thought for a mortal human being. Or an unsettling thought for the one figuring a way out of the mind, seeing it as a maze. Time in the lockdown had a special quality to it, engaging in a love affair. It felt as if we experienced the full parabola of a five-year relationship over the course of three months. I am looking for a third option. Perhaps she weaves thoughts as she texts while she is thinking textile. I mean the image of a thread, linear like a narrative, can bring comfort exploring the nature of consciousness. If a grid helps as a structure to categorise experiences. I develop an understanding towards the series of Gargi`s questions, using the loom as a support. She is travelling through time. She finds a way out of the grid. She finds a way to grasp the movement and transcend dualism. I conclude there is no fundamental support. The constant shift of support and being supported is the only constant. Weaving provides temporary shelter to my mind, as textile provides a shelter ultimately impermanent. I enjoy it as a colourful way to wrap myself in an idea. A thread, as long as it lasts, is a product of material available in space and time, a testimony of the resources. Apart from slowing down from high speed production and consumption of market economy, weaving provides access to a space where I can take emotions seriously. Craft offers me a way to embody this space and to feel free. I wove a shelter for a hermit in isolation times of a sick earth. Back home after this capsule relationship I dismantled the spring lockdown loom to frame the record of daily weaves and sent an image to Alex, who still lives on the boat. He says: “Looks tartan. Love the colours. Natural.” I ask: “Does it resemble in any way your view? To me only codified.” He replies: “Phone Photography will never capture the truth of it. I have a visual memory of this, on and off the loom. Anything made at the boat, leaves its imprint. Yes! this is early code.”

Hermit Shelter
Markermeer
2020
silk yarn
100CM x 80CM

Paterswoldsemeer
2022
Groningen
silk yarn
80CM x 100CM

Xabia
2023
silk yarn

horizons for sale at Nostalgia Shop Het Resort Groningen, 2023





horizon published in Weefwerk #3 theme: transparency, 2023