Pre-COVID, I had many plans for 2020. One was to spend two months in residency at the Iceland Textile Center. This residency has been postponed. After briefly considering to undertake the intended project of the residency here in Scotland during the fall semester, and choosing not to, I did start a different embroidery project. (Mind you, I have never learned how to embroider.)

I found some great fabric my first day out of quarantine (what else does one do after emerging from two weeks of solitary confinement, and is walked out and unable to drink more espresso?!). I was not entirely sure what my intention was for this fabric, but eventually the fabric told me.

Taking up needle and embroidery floss as a means for ‘resting and digesting’ between texts, I made biometric embroidery of my heartbeat, enmeshed in a field of universal sound waves (as found in Google image searches).

 

As I sat in moments (hours) of creative labour, I found myself listening to podcasts about the authors and philosophers whose writings I was reading. Listening to someone talk about Marxism and labour, while I was occupied in labour seemed entertainingly ironic. So I curated a playlist.