HOLDERS

HOLDERS is a movement and textile research in which the aging body is invited to explore how the intangible realm of memory can be expressed and shared through performativity. Through the craft of knitting with the body, the research developed in an attempt to physically represent remembrance and oblivion.

Memory is a dynamic reality that operates according to its own rules. In our minds, the memory space is constantly being created, transformed and crumbled, the elasticity of its walls holding its precious content. Memories warp and evolve, their matter recycled, their details fragmented, dilated or shrunk to a minimal essence. Textile explorations take shape in the action of knitting with fabric, a visual metaphor for the processes of remembering and forgetting. To knit is to recollect a memory, to unknit is to forget. Or is forgetting a far too laborious and challenging process to be compared to the effortless act of pulling the work undone?

Francesca Chiodi Latini's aim through HOLDERS is to reach and empower the elderly community by sharing my somatic and artistic knowledge. Perfomativity is a tool to access one’s own memory and experience with physical and mental awareness. The result is a touching and disarming transgenerational exchange that dissolves the archetypes of the Grandmother, the Mother, the Son and Daughter, the Teacher, the Student, the Dancer.

A circular learning process emerges, creating a new collective practice that brings Francesca's choreographic method closer to a community-based approach. The research involves a close collaboration with textile and visual artist Miguel Peñaranda Olmeda and musicians Kris Vanderstraeten and Ruben Machtelinckx.