String figures as a Playful Conversation and Research Method
This is an invitation to a perpetual rehearsal, an improvisation, a play. It is an attempt to explore collective string figure weavings as a conversation method to think with and about the body as a space of imagination.
To invite other bodies and experiences into their thesis process, Laura is presenting an early, fragmentary and associative stage of their research at the Joint Research Day 2024 as a performative, playful conversation and collective thinking and moving with string figures. String figures are an ancient practice deriving from indigenous cultures, one of the most widely spread games in the world and a play that accompanies stories that are given on. Donna Haraway uses them in Staying with the Trouble as a metaphor for interconnectedness, relationality and collaboration.
In an early try in Summer 2024, Laura hosted the string figures to talk about their research process in the master’s program and to reflect on their dependency on community. In this iteration the playful method will be more participatory and not only gives the threads, but also the power of weaving to the participants. The line between performer and audience is blurred, it dissolves.
As Laura understands themself through conversation, it is an experiment to converse with each other and become entangled. It is a method for dialogue to share experiences and thoughts regarding their research. It is a rehearsal in becoming dependent and a practice of visualising and embodying our relation and interconnectedness. Following bodily annotations, they welcome the participants of the Joint Research Day to inhabit with them these patterns and to ask: How can the moving body become a space of imagination that eludes naming processes and fixed (gender) identities to move towards fluidity of being? How is language incapable of containing lived experiences? How can we rehearse the queer body in motion as a site of resistance, escape and imagination beyond language’s boundaries and normative identities?
While weaving a net around each other, we are trying to hold space for imagination and embodiment. This is an invitation to a perpetual rehearsal, an improvisation, a play. And we cannot hold the threads alone.
