Sara Hanghøj: The constitutive sofa cushion – materialization analysed from a cultural perspective
Material Culture Studies - Department of Curriculum Research
The Danish University of Education, Copenhagen
The PhD project with the title “The constitutive sofa cushion – materialization analysed from a cultural perspective” is based on cultural analysis and empiric research which exposes how personal values can be expressed through an everyday artefact. The project is linked to research carried out by the Material Cultural Studies at the DanishUniversity of Education and stems from didactic textile research. With regard to deeper analysis, the philosophy of the investigation is to choose and concentrate on a single artefact as a research item, a hand woven sofa cushion. The analysis is made of how a former textile crafts teacher’s subjective personal values materialize through a hand woven sofa cushion, with the sitting room as a cultural and informal environment as its arena in 2005.
The female creator and user of the sofa cushion, who is the researcher’s source of information (the informant) was trained according to the teachings and within the framework of the DanishFolkHigh School. Here she was professionally educated and worked as a crafts teacher between 1946 and 1988. She offers her life’s experience, her living room and home textiles for research purposes.
Culture is regarded as process. The project makes use of narratives, phenomenological approach, materiality of the memory and analysis of items as a base for cultural analysis.
The stories consist of a finely detailed perspective, a concentrated study seen within in a larger social and cultural context with regard for theinterpretation and reflection of the outside world.
Above all, the N.F.S. Grundtvig based DanishFolkHigh School craft culture is analysed as a cultural element and presented in a social context.
The word material is not only used in reference to an artefact, but as an expression of the relationship between the human body and the outside world and therefore encompasses actions. Work is carried out methodically with analysis of the artefact, cultural analysis as well as the construction of a diagrammatic model for scientific discussion of the creation, usage and existence of the sofa cushion, understood also as the material interactions that occur between the human body, space and artefact, thereby revealing the materialization process.
The weaving and use of a sofa cushion is not just about what a person will use a cushion for, but also what the cushion does to the person. An artefact such as a hand woven sofa cushion is not just a biographical decorative article, as well as relating to the senses and intellect, it is also a player in daily life and affects the user’s behaviour and self-image to such a degree, that the dualism between the subject and object appears more faceted. The textile craft teacher’s personal values materialize in the way in which the threads are spun, in the technique used to create the textile for the cushion, in the materials used, in the pattern, in the choice of vegetable dyes, in the memories of the social history at the time of the cushion’s creation, which is present within the social environment in which the cushion is used today, together with the care of textile. The sofa cushion’s creation, usage and existence, are analysed on a base of a special cultural understanding of chaos and order, amateur and professional, nature, pleasure and moderation, gender, time and care of the user.
Further progress
Until now the cultural analysis of the sofa cushions creation, usage and existence has been put into a micro historical perspective mostly concerning subjective views on the role of the artefact in the creating and constitution of individual, gendered and professional identity and with focus on knowledge as power or knowledge as dialoque in the Danish education of handcraft teachers.
At the moment a further progress is done concerning a macro historical perspective on the way objects or artefacts become social. The cultural analysis of the research is confronted with the ANT, the Actor-Network-Theory (Latour 1998; 2005) in order to discuss how the idealization of the simplicity of artefacts, as presented through functionalism as a social programme, has affected the social and gendered identity of women seen from a more international point of view. Part of this macro historical perspective will be presented and discussed at my paper presentation at the conference in Oslo in May 2007.