Poetics of Lace

After creating a porcelain lace rabbit house, I became more curious of Bachelards’ Poetics of Space, and the idea of the house being a metaphor for humanness. In the first part of the reading, concerning the nest, he describes the phenomenological similarities between the nest and the home, while reminding us that verbs describing the idea of retreat, relate to animal movements (Balk, flee, burrow, “chicken out”…), thus implying animal qualities that exist within humans. 

In designing my performance/ installation, Nikoukira (The homemaker), the idea of building a house structure out of the methodological movements of rolling out porcelain clay onto lace press molds, was in many ways similar to the primitive movements of how an animal creates its nest. Using my own hands to laboriously and repeatedly press clay into the molds to create hundreds of tiles can be considered a primitive gesture.

Bachelard brings to our attention Van Gogh’s paintings of cottages and nests and how, “for a painter, it is probably twice as interesting if while painting a nest, he dreams of a cottage and while painting a cottage, he dreams of a nest.” (98) I’m interested in this sort of reflectiveness that coincides with ones lived experience and how as humans, we can’t help but project our emotions onto our relationships with objects and our experience. Similar to Visher’s philosophy on empathy in our earlier readings, phenomenology seeks to project ourselves and give meaning into the objects and spaces of our environment.

I was also struck by his statement, “dreams of a garment-house are not unfamiliar to those who indulge in the imaginary exercise of the function of inhabiting,” for the mere fact that I have essentially made a “garment-house” if one considers the traditional use of lace.  This brings up he notion of the function of inhabiting in our cloths and in our bodies. 

He also brings up the notion of the house/ nest as a protective enclosure and introduces the home of snails and crustaceans— the shell. If one considers the course shell like structure of my porcelain tiles, one can be reminded of the inhabitants of seashells and mollusks. Or —more accurately in reference to my work—of one who makes a home out of broken shells. This, and Bachelards idea of how when we discover a nest, it takes us back to our childhoods, or a childhood we wish we had….and that “ if we return to the old home as to a nest, it is because memories are dreams, because the home of other days has become a great image of lost intimacy.” (100)

Finding moments of humanness, even when not depicted in the literal representation of a house, is an integral component in this reading, and generally, what triggers many people the desire to create art.