| nomadic textile art / the nomadic art forms are an attempt to define the world in its many aspects ............................................................................ | |||||
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| nomadic textile art altai has, for some years now, been devoted to the diffusion of nomad art. the use of the word ‘art’ in this context aims to provide a provocative parallel with the more customary – at least for us – western forms of art such as painting or writing. although such art forms are also the fruit of individual artistic expression, and although nomad weaving acts as a catalyst for collective primordial inner needs, we can nevertheless find a common thread in their respective attempts to define the world in its many aspects. where western art has gradually moved towards the superfluous, nomad art, owing to its isolation from urban influences, has always had rarefaction and simplicity at the foundation of its expression. so by modernity we are referring to something innate, something primary, something which lies at the very heart of human nature. this lecture isn’t, and has no intention of being, a complete manual of nomad production, but it does aim to shed light on these aspects, which are so often ignored. by raffaele carrieri http://www.altai.it
--- modernity of the origins: the sign in nomadic textile art ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ by ettore sottsass filicudi, 28/7-1/8 1999 © 1999 altai / courtesy raffaele carrieri translation by jennifer celani --- maps, where these sort of places are to be found, mark ‘central asia’ with a not very large cluster of black dots. these black dots actually stand for one of the planet’s most terrifying, most hostile deserts, the desert of takla-nakan in eastern turkestan, a plateau nestled on the incredibly high mountain range of pamir, indu-kush, kun-sun and north of tien-shan… between the never-ending desert and the ice-capped mountain barriers, lie green oases, thanks to the water that flows from the rocky heights; there, along the oases, along that stretch of green, those barren lands, round hilltops, frozen rivers, dark lakes and rocky paths, both south and north of the desert, routes for the silk trade developed, joining west in kashgar, then balkh and through nerv reaching the caspian sea and the cities of baghdad, damascus and antioch. for centuries, long merchant caravans, laden with treasures and misery, took to these roads, as did missionary priests, preachers of various faiths, explorers, story-tellers, savage gangs of bandits. princesses passed with their caravans soon to be sold as wives to foreign rulers; hordes of bloodthirsty armies passed along these roads, with dreams of conquering the world, ready to steal and devastate anything in their wake… over this vast stretch of land with its blades of short grass treaded over for seven, maybe eight centuries, innumerable tribes, unlinked among themselves, would often travel. in spring they reached higher places in search of greener pastures; in autumn they descended to avoid the snowdrifts, and this pattern of life was repeated again and again. Men, women and children were constantly on the go, carrying tents, carpets, cookware, blankets, food, herbs, dry flowers, chasing their herds of sheep, crying out to their sheepdogs; maybe a richer member would travel on horseback, kicking the poor animals as he rode on… when the people stopped along the way in some pastureland full of fresh water, tents would go up, sheep would be shorn, wool would be spun, animals would be milked and from their milk cheese, yogurt and butter would be made, the latter by shaking the cream in jars of stiffened sheep skin. with the merchants they encountered on the way, they traded their cheeses for primitive grains and wild oats and their sheepskins for shiny knives from faraway lands… nomadic tribes of shepherds once lived and still live today lives of hardships, extreme hardships: cold temperatures were fatal, the heat unbearable; winds were sandy, the water sometimes undrinkable; the fats were foul-smelling, illness and disease were incurable; the sun was blinding and the dark nights frightening; good times did not last long, bad times did… the world – what we call our gracious nature – came down on these people with a forceful vengeance, in unpredictable and at times unexplainable ways, showing the impassive side of its eternal face, the shadow of a perverted grin on its countenance, both seductive and murderous… for these shepherd tribes that roamed from the steppes to the inaccessible mountaintops, from china to baghdad, few were the ways out, as a means of respite from the suffocating claustrophobia of such conditions imposed on them by heavenly nature: some long, mumbled prayers, a few special magic words, a twist or turn of a raised foot, the deep rhythms of a drum, a trumpet or two, hands raised to seek mercy, or hands joined to declare one’s own submission… and perhaps long parades and feasts, during which poles were planted in the ground as a sign of awareness of a fundamental knowledge: the cosmos was made of sky, earth and underground… perhaps there were songs and clumsy dances for a few hours of entertainment, a few hours’ distraction from that beastly, hard life, as if it never really existed. above all, in order to escape heaven’s impassivity, to convince oneself that nature, the unknown is out there and that mankind, the nomadic shepherd is here, secretly, gradually and secretly, over the years, those people, left totally on their own, got an idea and started to behave insolently, to offer insolence for insolence. they decided to steal from nature, from the unknown, whatever they could get their hands on… (we, in fact, are still being insolent: we are still stealing whatever we can.) with the passing of many seasons, those foresaken people, those people who roamed here and there looking for something to eat, had started to steal from space, by dragging it along in their tents… had started to steal the wilderness of animals, by domesticating sheep, goats, dogs, horses and falcons… had started stealing the wilderness of plants by cultivating grains, berries, fruits and flowers, their fragrances and trees, too… had started to steal sounds by inventing flutes, bells, guitars and drums… had started to steal shapes by drawing on stone hunting scenes and battle scenes, female bodies, fleeing animals, the wings of birds, by painting skulls in red tints… had started to steal something of the dark side of the heavenly apparition; in other words, that part of the general plan – obscure as it was – that could have been considered thought, an occasion to know, to design, the ultimate reason for feeling one’s existence, for feeling alive…  there had been an attempt to steal the entire design from the great unknown; thought had been given to what it would look like, to how it should be started, how it was organized and how it could be stolen; at least, how to reproduce the great unknown to some extent, how to keep some memory of it, as a guideline for one’s course of action. stolen things are always very precious, by virtue of the fact that they are stolen. theft calls for a hazardous act, almost heroic. it is contempt on the part of those who do not have of those who do, those who have too much. in ancient times, theft was protected by the gods… space stolen from the impassive heavens, the tent’s space, space that becomes the sole possession of the nomadic shepherd is precious. it is sacred. stolen space, passing from the unfathomable depths of the cosmos, from the impenetrable darkness, into the humble hands of mankind, cannot escape from the permanent presence of the gigantic ghost of he who was wronged… that precious stolen space is, however, a quintessential element for depicting human identity, human nature. yet, human nature does not seem ever able to depict itself, thus avoiding subjugation to the heavenly darkness: the ground inside the tent, the wooden pole that holds it up in the middle, the hole on top that allows the smoke to rise and reach the sky and from which heavenly protection was hoped to descend on those below and within, are nothing but humble, caring and loving reproductions of what has been revealed of the cosmos, of what can be sought after from the extraordinary cosmic epiphany; like a plea for pardon extended to the gigantic ghost of the wronged… in order to identify with the stolen space, to become memory of cosmic space – that intermediate space between the upper and lower worlds – the tent’s ground, shapeless, indefinite, temporary, gathers together, within the limits of human dimensions, not only shreds of the cosmic epiphany, but the tale of the quests, hopes, fears, angers, joys and emotional excesses tied to human adventures… the unceasing impulse to talk about, maintain and know what efforts are involved in being men, men who are at once with, separated from and against heavenly destinies, was handed down by the nomad tribes into signs, shapes, symbols and colors in the patient art of weaving cloths and carpets, supports that are transportable, flexible, soft and resistant and, for the way they were made, expressive. in ancient carpets, the representation of how fragile and dubious mankind has resisted the foes of the unknown is both sightly and moving. in those ancient carpets, the earliest to appear, are the visible signs of simple, intense and profoudly resonant shapes, devised by a people of newly established self-awareness; the history of a people has been designed, people whose presence on this earth testify to their full awareness of the conditions they are living in and will continue to live in…  ------- monthly designboom newsletter ------- ------- ? comments and contact us ? ------- |
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