Dread
Malin Örde, 2007.
This work investigates the relationship between substance, form and matter through detaching parts of her body and making them into a piece of clothing. It begins with cutting of my own six-year-old dread locks. Then I knit the dread locks into a cap that I put back on again. As such this anti-industrial work, which has as much to do with movements in art and craft, advocating economic and social reform, as with the renaissance of sustainable do-it-yourself activities based on locally-sourced organic and recycled materials and hand made products, asks important questions: Where does creation and design start? When deciding to let the hair grow? When felting the hair? When deciding to cut the hair? When deciding to knit the hair into a cap?
However, in this work, the process does not only start with loose matter, the process starts with a substance, the hair, which is gradually destroyed by dissolving the form of the matter, cutting the matter into another category of being: formless matter. By knitting the loose matter into a new distinct form, a cap, one once again moves the matter from one form of being into a new being, based on its new form of construction. By reinstalling the original substance in its original place, with a similar function but with a different expression based on a certain technique, the process of cutting, knitting and reinstalling body parts on the body demonstrates the intricate relationship between matter, technique and form in the exploration and formation of knowledge.
Form and matter ridicules discriminating conclusions such as: “Oh, what a good idea! And on top of that, it is also well written!” To the contrary, the work proves the necessary aesthetic quality of the self-explanatory demonstration of a scientific substance: its cause, its nature, and its principle. That is to say, substance cannot exist if it is not in the form of something and the essence of the substance of something, e.g. its principle theoretical value, does not become propositional knowledge if it is not in the form of a convincing aesthetic presentation.