The idea for this project is to spread a lot of indigo dyed fabric.. but what should be on the fabric?? I thought of leaving it just blue.. but somehow it does not fit to this project. Something has to be on. then what it will be? The idea is that it represents the region, and it serves as the motivation for one to pick one fabric from the other and take home. It is in a way, a story maker, or an actor of this story.
I started out by making some mushroom/ vegetable stencils for testing katazome techniques. When it was hanging in the Zeugfäberei, I got a lot of compliment from others who work there… but somehow I had an impression that they are maybe too nice. Is it really an idea to make a lot of regionally grown vegetables as prints??
I had to think a lot about the role of these prints. Should it be nice? Should it be edgy? Is it some kind of critical message? or punk statement? a story?? what is the tone of voice I want to use?
Then I heard a story of Aloys Zötl, a painter who comes from the family of dyer, whose house is now a Färbermuseum (Blueprint museum) in front of Zeugfäberei. He painted throughout his life and left 400 paintings of animals, some of them exotic, some regional. He never traveled. He painted these animals out of the books he owned. He died unknown, until Andrendré Breton, a poet and theorist of surrealism, found his paintings and said “this is cool!”. (perhaps not exactly cool, but he recognized a surrealist aesthetic in it). Zötl became a local hero then, as there has been an exhibition about Zötl in Austria, and there is a Zötl room in Färbermuseum.
I looked at his paintings (online and on a book). His paintings are strange. I will not call it imaginative as the animals are existing animals and it is not so fantastical. But you get the impression that something is wrong. It is painted in details, but feels some strange obsession in certain details, like a penis of a baboon, or wrinkles on the legs of zebra horse. And this impression that it is not his lived experience is strongly there. It is a flat world he paints. It is not hot nor cold, no sweat, no noise… this ideal situation maybe is the cause of “imaginative” impression that it gives.
For a moment, I thought of referring the print motif to Zötl, but I decided not to. I look for my lived experience in Gutau. The practice of indigo dying is much more of a lived experience, with blue fingers and sweat from mixing the bath, every dying process is unknown until it is finished. The dying bath/ küpe is living thing. Everyday its pH level and the temperature changes. This is far from what you can get in a book theoretically.