Textures of Emotions: Storytelling and Textiles - call for conference abstracts and papers

Textures of Emotions: Storytelling and Textiles - the 1st Global Inclusive Interdisciplinary Conference takes place Friday 8th July 2022 - Saturday 9th July 2022 in Athens, Greece. A call for abstracts and papers is open till 11th February 2022.

This interdisciplinary conference and collaborative networking event aim to bring together academics, professionals, practitioners, NGOs, voluntary sector workers, etc., in the context of a variety of formats: presentations, seminars, workshops, panels, performances, etc.

300-word reviews of your proposed contribution (paper abstracts, proposals for workshops, collaborative works or round tables, overviews of artistic projects, or any other relevant forms of participation you are interested in) should be submitted by Friday 11th February 2022

This conference seeks to encourage artists, practitioners, independent scholars, early career researchers, photographers, academics, performers, and writers, to intermingle and will provide platforms for interdisciplinary interactions that are fruitful and conducive to broadening horizons and sparking future projects, collaborations, and connections.

Abstracts and papers call - the organisers would welcome proposals for presentations including verbal, performative, workshops or exhibit – on any aspect of textile thinking, emotion and storytelling including but not limited to:

•  Narrative textiles – contemporary and traditional
•  Clothing and gender identity
•  Cloth and the body, erotic cloth
•  Emotional textiles
•  The role of textiles in recovery from trauma
•  Psychological importance of garments
•  Activism and subversion
•  Meditation and Spirituality
•  Fine Art
•  The use of textiles as protest
•  The use of cloth as metaphor in literature
•  Textiles in film, television and performance
•  Traditional textiles and historical storytelling

Textiles surround us in our everyday lives.  From the clothes we wear to cover our bodies and communicate who we are​ (or who we would like to be), to household linens and domestic fabrics with which we dress our homes. Textiles are everywhere and hold the memory of our existence. Ubiquitous, they are often undervalued and unseen but under certain circumstances they become totemic, charged with emotion, potent with meaning and powerful in holding memory.

Textiles can be used to convey a political message though use as protest banners or flags – fought over, burned, claimed and reclaimed by different factions. Choices of clothing are used to foster ideas of identity and difference, expression of non – normative behaviours, bonding and tribalism as well as providing a way to provoke discussion, attitude and confrontation. They can also be used in more violent ways as gags, blindfolds, masks or as constrictive garments – corsets and foot bindings.

Textiles have been used in traditional ways to express the political and personal concerns of the present – consider the AIDS quilts, banners and textile reactions to 9/11 – the narrative stitch work of the Bayeux and Overlord Embroideries of their day. Textiles are used in the early years of a child as a transitional object when they are learning to see themselves as a separate being from their mother. The familiarity of textile as a ‘comfort blanket’ means that they have also been used to enable recovery from traumatic events later in life.

Please note - the deadline for proposals (abstracts and papers) is: 11 February 2022

Further information on conference programme and registration will be published in due course.