The Gewebe and the idea of the Air Loom was developed during CIVIC VIRTUE’s residency at Künstlerhäuser Worpswede and exhibited at ‘IMMERGO IDENTIDUM / Time To Recollect’ at the Stadhausgalerie in Münster.
The Air Loom was used to influence minds, by weaving time into space. A spatial form of time made it possible for an idea to occupy different points in space at one single moment in time. By spinning time into currents of air and various gasses and weaving it into Air Tapestry, the Air Loom was able to change time from progression into movement and depth.
“The Air Loom is operated by a gang of undercover Jacobin revolutionaries, who want to force Britain into a disastrous war with Revolutionary France and are bent on maintaining hostilities between the two nations.” (1)
However, it is one thing to change the design of a state, it is quite another to change one state into something radically different.
“We do not want to move from problem to solution as if they were both present in the same space at once, but instead we seek ways to move from the current space into one we will inhabit at a later point in time.” (2)
And:
“We do not seek for answers within, but envision the problem outside, that is, the problem is structural. There are two structures: The first structure is the one in which the question arose, the second structure is the one in which the question will be- come irrelevant.” (3)
While the Air Loom was able to exhibit time spatially, this form of time was necessarily always already structured, and could as such never account for the possibility of change. If not progression but movement and depth, what then makes it ever possible for a state to radically alter into something yet unknown?
A reversal of the actual weaving process of the Air Loom was believed to open a gateway back to the progression of time. In order to leave the fabric of movement and depth which formed reality, a state of chaos was induced. This signified the return to the Air Loom Cloud, a state, it was believed, in which no specific designs or hierarchies yet existed. The intellectual diaspora thus induced constituted a recurrent purification ritual, necessary for any state laid out solely in a fabric of movement and depth. Consequently, the Air Loom not only functioned as a device for mind control, in reverse it could wash the brain.
More about THe Gewebe here: https://gewebe.tumblr.com
More about the exhibition here: https://timetorecollect.tumblr.com/.
(1) source: http://mikejay.net/articles/james-tilly-mat– thews-and-the-air-loom/
(2) source: A fabrication.
(3) source: A fabrication.