Bloodline: An Experiment in Knit and Proximity is research by practice that has its origin in an
affective encounter experienced during the performance of two women knitting together,
a mother and daughter – who simultaneously knit a conjoined red line, Bloodline –
initiated by the daughter, who is, in this context, both artist and writer.
The research responds to this question: how might I account for a moment of affect, to
explain its manifestation in association with knitting and the knitted thing, and to
substantiate my hypothesis that the knitted object, and knitting as process, have a unique
capacity to explore the issues of proximity and distance that are encountered and
negotiated in Bloodline?
This research adopts an auto ethnographic and mixed methodology approach to
investigate the context, practice and outcomes of hand knitting as illuminating the
experience and meanings of attachment, separation and loss – the problematic of being in
relation with and to another. It seeks to contribute, through a process of ‘close looking’
and the production of evocative objects (Turkle, 2011), to a language of textile practice
that is as much concerned with the sticky, unpleasant and unknown as it might be with
the sensuous and warm.