I will be speaking at the Biennale for Crafts and Design in Copenhagen, Denmark at 11am June 29, 2013.

Critical writing about textiles is an emerging academic discipline under constant review. This talk will consider the thorny moment when the word becomes surrogate for the textile. Drawing on examples from fiction alongside theoretical writing, this presentation will consider how textiles negotiate their future relationship with written language. Spared the long shadow of an existing cannon, the opportunities for collaboration between text and textile are remarkably open-ended. But our attention to the material of language is as important to the development of the discipline as our attention to the material of words, sentences and paragraphs. The ability of the textile to avoid restrictive labels and constantly reposition and re-imagine its place in our lives means that our writing about them must aspire to be as nimble and open to revision as the materials we write about.