Sanity Samplers
Documenting and healing mental breakdowns through stream-of-consciousness stitching. The text is not prewritten on paper, but directly stitched on fabric as its first and only medium.
2017 - Ongoing
Cotton thread on found handkerchiefs and discarded fabric
Sanity Samplers
Documenting and healing mental breakdowns through stream-of-consciousness stitching. The text is not prewritten on paper, but directly stitched on fabric as its first and only medium.
2017 - Ongoing
Cotton thread on found handkerchiefs and discarded fabric
Sanity Samplers
Documenting and healing mental breakdowns through stream-of-consciousness stitching. The text is not prewritten on paper, but directly stitched on fabric as its first and only medium.
2017 - Ongoing
Cotton thread on found handkerchiefs and discarded fabric
Documenting and healing mental breakdowns through stream-of-consciousness stitching. The text is not prewritten on paper, but directly stitched on fabric as its first and only medium.
Sanity Samplers
2017 - Ongoing
Cotton thread on found handkerchiefs and discarded fabric
Documenting and healing mental breakdowns through stream-of-consciousness stitching. The text is not prewritten on paper, but directly stitched on fabric as its first and only medium.
Documenting and healing mental breakdowns through stream-of-consciousness stitching. The text is not prewritten on paper, but directly stitched on fabric as its first and only medium.
LAYLA KLINGER
Still, Missing You (1559)
Traveling through time and lace
Electroluminescent wire, silver coated thread, electrical wires, flesh body, void
2021

Still, Missing You (1559) is an immersive light-lace environment, tackling craft conservation through a queer approach to textile making.
What does craft conservation look like in the 21st century?
How do we preserve historical craft knowledge while manifesting textile futures?
Applying a queer approach, the guiding principles are radical hybridity: traditional/innovative, garment/environment, object/subject, textile/light technology. The work uses Venetian lace patterns from one of the oldest known lace pattern books, Le Pompe, published in 1559. These patterns are worked in an electroluminescent wire, a light emitting material, creating a large scale lace environment. It is an open circuit meant to be completed by the touch of a human body. As you touch the different lace sensors in the environment, a variety of light patterns are triggered all around them. Using a non-fiber material with traditional lace making techniques, it pushes the boundaries of what is a textile. It injects traditional textile making into the realm of lighting design, interaction design and hi-tech. Further applying a queer approach, it offers eroticism as strategy: light, touch and sensors in the shape of hands seducing you, drawing you in for an immersive sensory experience.
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Installation at Urban Zen, NYC. Photos by Shahrez Syed
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Conductive lace touch sensors
Custom Tools for Queer Lace:
3D printed resin eastern European-style bobbins | Silicone cast large bobbins for EL lace | Beads and wooden skewers shuffle&match bobbins







Making one EL lace panel: 10 hours 20 minutes