Mason Line Hammock (Bridge)
Largo das Artes/Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Sociais (IFCS), Rio de Janeiro
May 25, 2016
As part of a two-month residency through Despina at Largo das Artes in Rio's Centro, this installation of hand-knit Mason Line hammock linked the Largo Residency studio with it's neighbor, Instiuto de Filosofia e Clências Socials (IFCS), one of the oldest and most venerable public universities in Rio de Janeiro.
In linking the two structures, the hammock serves a a bridge between two instiutions that are meant to serve similar goals but often end up functioning quite differently.
The single string of the knitted hammock illustrates complex knots that can bog down movement while creating an infrastructure of support.
Curator and professor Bernardo Jose de Souza writes about the use the hammock and Mason Line in relation to the body and the support the hammock structure provides for it; his text in Portuguese can be read here.
A text by the artist here, with an excerpt below, details more of the project.
http://despina.org/nancy-popp/?lang=en
"Institutions are structures intended to create protected physical, ideological space for relations between others. The difficulty lies in not closing ourselves off to others in the structure, to those on the outside, and to other structures
Knitting creates a ‘web’ of connections in using a single connected line to create a supportive structure for a body, a spine, and for individual experience and subjective position. Such support is not without precarity, but bridging distance is impossible without calculated risks by individuals."