the sweater factory
installation and performance, 2010
Secondhand wool sweaters are unravelled and reknitted into one long panel on a knitting machine. Pattern pieces will then be cut from this panel and sewn together into new sweaters, leaving behind the remnants of the panel with garment-shaped holes cut from it. Finished sweaters will be given away to those who visit and view the project.
As with Study for a Remnant Factory (2008), the project focuses on the artist performing a daily routine of seemingly useless labour, dismantling something and reassembling it, through a tedious process, into essentially the same thing. While the installation is reminiscent of a factory floor and the actions taken by the artist and the rules and schedules adhered to mimic those of assembly line labour, the finished product is a unique handcrafted object, and the act of giving that object to strangers is an intimate, domestic and loving act.
The Sweater Factory had a twelve-day trial run in June 2010 as part of the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation, an initiative of Windsor, Ontario-based arts and research collective Broken City Lab. With that experience, I am currently tweaking the project in hopes of taking the Sweater Factory on the road and realizing it at a larger scale.