Textile Geometries: A Speculation on Stretchy Space

Textile-based materials and practices engage with a range of spatial concepts. This presentation will explore the work of a number of artists, arts collectives and vernacular practitioners whose work has engaged with Euclidean and non- Euclidean geometries in order to develop a speculative spatiality of textile practice. Examples ranging from Marcel Duchamp�s Three Standard Stoppages to the worldwide environmental craftivism project The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, and the temporal maps embodied by Jeanette Sendler�s knitted work Finding your way Home, will be examined in relation to their connections to space and to the stretchy geometries imaginable via textile visual practice. The chapter will also relate these textile works to the notions of smooth/striated space proposed by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, in order to extend upon Deleuze and Guattari�s understanding of space and propose the idea of �smooth/striated/stretchy space� as a more comprehensive way to describe the spatial possibilities of textiles. Throughout this analysis, a case will be made for textiles as a mode of visual practice that can embrace a complex range of spatial understandings within artistic, philosophical and mathematical discourses.