BLÓM + BLÓÐ

2015

Blóm + Blóð (Icelandic for "Flowers + Blood") is a video performance and textile project developed during a  residency at the Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós, IS. Blóm + Blóð marks an early articulation of WhiteFeather's ongoing methodology of the landscape as laboratory, in which ecological sites function as research environment, studio, and agent.

Traversing the autumnal terrain of northern Iceland, WhiteFeather gathered plants for natural dyes, fibres, and other materials while experimenting with landscape elements as tools for textile production. The resulting textile work is deliberately absent from the video, which focuses on the process as the artwork. Knowledge acquisition, sensory engagement, and material encounter become the primary outcomes of the creative act. 

Rather than treating landscape as a passive backdrop, Blóm + Blóð approaches it as an active participant in the production of knowledge and form. Romanticized notions of wilderness, artistic inspiration, and craft labour are complicated by the practical realities of Icelandic rural life, including animal husbandry and seasonal slaughter. The work embraces bodily mess, physical labour, and environmental contingency as integral components of aesthetic production.

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Video: [00:08:00], single-channel digital video.

Textile works: Hand-knit, plant-dyed swatch banner; handwoven overshot triptych panel wall hanging, made from hand-dyed Icelandic wool yarn and silk ribbon, and horsehair. Weaving features embedded DNA data pattern design.

The project was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Textiles & Materiality Research Cluster of the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology.

Blóm + Blóð has been exhibited and screened internationally through festivals, galleries, symposia, and artist-run centres, including the Subtle Technologies Festival at Inter/Access Gallery (Toronto), Dawson City International Short Film Festival (solo installation at Odd Gallery), Textile Society of America Biennial Symposium, and LABOCINE.

Research blog: https://icelandna.wordpress.com/

Publications for further reading:

Becoming Environmental: Media, Logistics, and Ecological Change (Alix Johnson, ed). Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2019.

InTensions: Food, Embodiment and Knowledge. York University, 2018.

Fermenting Feminism, edited by Lauren Fournier. Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology and e-artexte, Berlin, 2017.

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