Spinning Doris & The House That Dwells In Me

“SPINNING DORIS”

(“Hilando a Doris”)

by Hilanda A.K.A. Tania López Winkler

Hilanda is a Spatial Private Detective. She looks for clues embedded in the fleeting aesthetic experiences of city life. Hilanda’s work involves strolling about and getting lost in the city’s maze and dreamscapes. If she was in Paris she would be a flaneuse, but since she operates in London she is a detective. When in rapture and delirium instead of playing the violin she spins filaments and threads.

            Often, at night, Hilanda spins the city’s fabric along with dreams into clues. These clues often unravel, detect or trace back the outlines of personal stories and culprits.     

Hilanda moved to a suburban 1930’s house in London. Little by little she began to take possession of the space stripping out any trace of previous inhabitation: out went the carpet, fitted furniture and wallpaper in each room. In doing this, she began to spin the threads of previous owners. So far she knew an old couple had lived int he house for 40 years. In the attic she found among the rubble a knitting machine, and closed by there was a collection pages of patterns cut from old magazines in an package. Among these magazine pages there was a newspaper wedding announcement  for Doris and John, married in 1946. Hilanda took this material and began spinning Doris.

            The patterns showed a pattern themselves in the way the instructions were organised by categories: materials, measurements, tension, abbreviations, back, front, sleeve, bands (waist, neck, buttons, etc.), and MAKE. From the patterns each category was taken and reconfigured into 9 lines. Each line ends with a “constructed model” collaged from the different sweater models knitted by Doris.

            “Spinning Doris” is a homage to the fabric and structure of the quotidian. It manifests the social space that the act of knit and dress produce.