Weaving Together // Surviving Capitalism // Britta Fluevog
I am going to take you on a journey today. I will to anchor this journey through my artwork, practise and thought process, mixing imagery with ideology.
In 2018, the UN, in conjunction with the World Meteorological Organization, released a report on the global climate change, that was very bleak. It showed a catastrophic change in the most recent years. This report sparked me to start my Ladders for Better Democracy Series.
Ladders for Better Democracy: Catalonia (Catalonian Upraising), Estonia (The Singing Revolution), Iceland (Wadmal for the Pirate Party). Variable dimensions, 2019. naturally dyed wool from Catalonia, Estonia & Iceland
Each Ladder is based on a different country’s peaceful revolution, like the singing revolution in Estonia against the USSR, and the Pirate Party in Iceland that actually held accountability after the 2007/2008 financial crisis. My instinct on hearing the catastrophic news on the climate crisis was to blame capitalism. Fundamentally the problem is not unwilling people or governments, it is global corporations with the power and sway they have to stop any fundamental change. Without Neo-liberal capitalism blocking these issues, they might be a challenge, but not next to impossible. How is it possible that corporations have more rights than the environment? As the Ladder’s teach us, we can rise up and overthrow oppressive systems, and that we don’t have to have bloody conflicts to do so.
Blaming capitalism for the climate crisis was not a leap for me, but something that has been steadily growing within my practise. Systemic injustices are something that I had been working through.
I Took Pride in My Work: Transnational Labour, Blacklisted Seamstress. 2’ x 2’ x 1’, 2014. hemp, thread, wire, wood.
My 2014 piece I Took Pride in My Work: Transnational Labour, Blacklisted Seamstress. was inspired by the story of a textile worker named Ana in the 1990’s in Mexico whose story is in Corinne Goria’s 2014 book Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy. Ana got involved in labour rights, was blacklisted for these activities, but free trade agreements ultimately moved the textile industry to central America. But her story is not unique. Every decade or two in the textile industry there is some major calamity that creates international outcry and backlash. The industry themselves are always surprised by the poor conditions they knew nothing about. After the outcry, the conditions and payment for the workers improves, but the industry inevitably moves somewhere else soon, with a new set of desperate people to exploit. Capitalism thrives crossing international borders, without any meaningful international laws to interfere.
Crossings—Transcending the Border [detail from Side B]. 5’6” x 7’ x 1’6”, 2014, angelina: India; Angora: China; bamboo: Taiwan; barbed wire: Canada; camel: Mongolia; cashmere: Mongolia; cotton: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Macau, Taiwan; driftwood: the beach; linen: Argentina; llama: Argentina; merino: Peru; metal; mink: China; mohair: India, Romania; nylon: China, Taiwan; polyester: Madagascar, Vietnam; spandex: Cambodia, Guatemala; silk: Argentina, Romania, Taiwan; stoneware: Canada; thistle: Nepal; viscose: Argentina; wool: China, India, Romania, Turkey; yak: Mongolia.
International movement is something I explored in my piece Crossing—Transcending the Border. It looks at how industrial textile makers are from poor countries and the goods they manufacture mostly get sent to wealthy countries. The system is set up so that the fruits of their labour readily cross borders, while the producers are unable to cross those same borders—international visa regulations make it impossible for poor people from poor countries to visit wealthy countries even if they somehow found the money to travel. How is it that goods are permitted travel while people are not?
The illegality of people is most obviously seen at borders. Borders are physical manifestations of exclusionary ideologies. They separate one place from another, one set of people from another, us from them, otherification. My work Border Building looks at this.
Border Building is a series of performance weavings of a mobile border at sites where borders have significance— Physical, national and psychological borders. The weaving is a large frame-woven double-sided carpet with pink shag on one side and white silk with a chain link pattern with silver sequins on the other side. It has travelled widely. It has visited Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and sat near a refugee re-settlement in Germany. On the lake of the Woods that spans Canada and the USA, it has floated serenely for a week. These places, this legacy is built into the work. The performative element, which includes interaction with viewers, it also includes the location and what it leaves within the piece. What essence of borders can my work pick up and how can its presence in these locations provoke change? How can the aesthetics of a border change our philosophy of borders and people seeking to cross them?
July 2015, At the bridge leading to the Unist'ot'en protest camp
I lucky enough to visit the Unist'ot'en anti-pipe line Camp of Wet’suwet'en people in Northern BC. Their problem is also capitalism paired with racist colonialism. The rights of the Canadian government are more important than indigenous rights and leaky pipelines (they always leak somewhere) avoid settler communities/ cities and instead go through native lands.
The pipelines are obviously going to lead to increased use of fossil fuels. To those concerned with the long term future, the pipeline building fund should be spent on alternate energy solutions and reduction of carbon emissions instead of spending money on increasing outdated modes of energy production. But Capitalism thinks of profits only in the short term.
Ice Weaving II. 30 cm x 50 cm, 2020. (Gif of installation) cotton, heat, ice, silk, time
Our world is melting out of control. But measures to save the climate are not impossible: most single use plastics are unnecessary; public transportation can be free and ubiquitous; many goods are shipped multiple times in the manufacturing process to make it cheaper, but the there is no price tag on how this effects the climate. The climate has no price tag. And money is the god we have chosen to worship. But what is the cost of catastrophic climate disasters? Capitalism must melt before our earth does.
In my Ice Weaving series, I am weaving into a frame of ice and then displaying it. When the ice melts, the weavings unravel or semi-unravel and only detritus of the weavings remain after the melting is completed. The weavings vary in size and materials with at least two contrasting materials of industrial textiles, cardboard, locally made traditional yarns, shrink wrap or pallet bands. It focus’ on international movement of goods and how this practise is leading to climate change.
I Used to Be a Douglas Fir, Now I am An Oak: Seeking Place Through the Use of Trees. Variable dimension, 2018. bamboo; bolts; dyes: acorn, oak bark, oak leaves; loom, artists’ old sweater, wool
We need to change how we relate to the environment. Until we see ourselves and our health is linked to the environment, we will not change. It is not because humans are stupid, but because the value we gain from environmental exploitation is direct and obvious and the value we loose is indirect, harder to measure and is often inflected on those not involved. But as I explore in I Used to Be a Douglas Fir, Now I am An Oak: Seeking Place Through the Use of Trees, we should use the environment as part of our self-deffiniton.
In Between Scarcity and Excess. 70 cm x 15 cm x 3cm, 2022. Dutch wax print and Handspun linen
We need balance. Our Neo-liberal capitalism is clearly failing us, we need to abandon it. We need to find new paths, new ways of thinking. This seeking for balance is something within the textile industry in In Between Scarcity and Excess.
The word “scarcity” is delicately woven in hand spun linen and “excess” is larger 3D stuffed dutch wax print. Paired together, the two represent pre-industrial and post-industrial textile creation and problems that arise within them. The preindustrial textile was exceedingly laborious where (mostly) women worked incessantly to have enough cloth to survive with very little to spare. Our current system is inordinately productive, the excess fills our landscape, pollutes our earth. We must seek the middle ground to bring us back into a harmonious equilibrium, between creating substantial labor, and the over-preciousness of textiles and their excessive over-production, resulting in a lack of value from the saturation of cheap materials into the retail landscape and subsequent landfill.
Welcome to Post-Capitalism. 70 cm x 35 cm x 3cm, 2022. Old clothing, single use plastics and unprocessed wool
How else should I end our journey than to welcome you into post-capitalism? I invite you to step into post-capitalism, to living a new truth. Create your own path, use your own tools. Dream, then get started.
Britta Fluevog is a third-generation matriarchal artist; her grandmother was a printmaker, her mother is a mixed-media artist, as well as her father, who is a shoe designer. Born in Vancouver, Canada, Estonian-Canadian artist Britta Fluevog is currently living in Jülich, Germany. Fluevog’s art practice primarily uses weaving and ceramics to create sculpture, and performance pieces. Fluevog completed her Master’s of Fine Art from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2015 and received her Interdisciplinary Bachelor of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in 2007. Upon graduating from her bachelor’s, Fluevog established a small ceramic co-op in a rural Ghanian village.
This is the second annual Weaving Together series, which brings to the forefront sustainable fibre art practices. Engaging the community to demonstrate accountability to the environment, show a coming-together through a variety of activities: online chats, essays, videos, in person workshops, and hands on community weaving opportunities. For more information on Weaving Together, visit Cool Arts Society.