Crying rya : a practitioner's narrative through hand weaving

This research project examines a repeated focus on time and slowness
that I have experienced over years in connection with my hand-weaving
practice using the Scandinavian technique of rya. Research through my
own studio practice has led me to question a public image of weaving as
time-consuming or slow and why temporality is attributed to the finished
object, while I claim that it is only experienced in the making process.
The claim of weaving as slow does not consider the body that weaves. I
have wanted to highlight the myth of slowness in crafts and handweav-
ing that does not always match my experience of the bodily knowledge of
weaving. The aim is to use myself and my own practice as a hand-weaving
artist to explore what is beyond these recurring concepts. My knowledge
includes conditions such as frustration, boredom, irritation, as well as
joy, curiosity and fascination. This research is thus motivated by what I
see as incomplete knowledge, where my contribution consists of under-
standing my own practice, with transparency through my own knowledge
development that I hope is useful more generally to future craft research.
I have combined my writing with several rya projects made in recent years
(2016-2022) structured from a personal perspective around my interest in
reflection on artistic practices, my body in making and the figurative rya
weaves I create. My research offers an example of how the connection
between claims about weaving as slow and time-consuming collide with
the experience of the development in the studio, as well as with my own
body, in a hand-making practice.