Drawing from a year of research in preparation for his final Issue Project Room residency project in early 2016, this talk develops a set of discontinuous thoughts on two fields of inquiry: the practice of weaving and the concept of the grotesque. In both, we can read obscure histories of how abstractions work through us and the geographies they carry with them, but also the limits of trying to make sense of those histories through the idea of “the body” as a discrete, coherent unit. The title comes from the process of translating a weaving pattern, or a “draft,” into the passage of time and the set of gestures that get concretized in a textile, and the talk considers this as a model for thinking about the sticking points and frictions, human and otherwise, that gather between design and realization. Continuing Williams’ interest in the essay as a form of experimental historical montage, Reading a Draft moves between the daily and fantastic, passing amongst pixels, tombs, factories, unicorns, and wallpaper to try and sketch a mode of claustrophobic and accumulated time that is as continually present as it has been long pushed out of view.
Wednesday, December 16
8:00 PM
Printed Matter
231 Eleventh Avenue
New York, NY 10001
Free, suggested $10 donation