New Working Paper “The Multiple Returns of Connectionism: Theory and History of Artificial Intelligence” (No. 42) released (Copy)
What if you weave your own story? Curating Authorship in WE ARE NOT CARPETS
by Tahereh Aboofazeli (Universität Köln, SFB)
How do collaborative research and exhibition practices challenge traditional notions of authorship in global carpet weaving? In this working paper, Tahereh Aboofazeli examines the project WE ARE NOT CARPETS: I Tell You My Story as a targeted intervention into the socially organized anonymity of carpet weavers. The paper analyzes how this anonymity is sustained by an epistemology of ignorance and the scopic economy of the carpet trade, investigates the emergence of a multimodal curatorial practice through Rancière’s concepts of the distribution of the sensible and dissensus, and outlines a reconfiguration of the relations among weaver, viewer, and researcher to relocate authorship as an interruption of established regimes of meaning and power.
About the Working Paper
This article examines the collaborative research and exhibition project WE ARE NOT CARPETS: I Tell You My Story as an intervention into the socially organized anonymity of carpet weavers. The article argues that this anonymity is not simply a gap in knowledge, but a field of active not-knowing sustained by an epistemology of ignorance and by the scopic economy through which carpets circulate as cultural and narrative commodities. Against a regime of curiosity directed toward pattern, region, authenticity, technique, and price, but rarely toward the weaver, the project asked weaver-collaborators: What if, instead of weaving the market’s pre-given designs, you wove your own story?
Drawing on the carpets, the weavers’ writings and reflections, collaborative curatorial practice, and audience responses across exhibitions in Cologne and Siegen, the article traces three interconnected displacements: the emergence of the weaver in an authorial position; the development of a multimodal curatorial practice that holds social recognition together with aesthetic indeterminacy; and the formation of a new literacy that reconfigures the relations among weaver, viewer, researcher, and curator. Reading through Rancière’s concepts of the distribution of the sensible and dissensus, the article argues that authorship operates here not as the addition of a missing voice, but as an interruption of the scene that separates making from the authority to determine meaning, form, circulation, and interpretation. Curating, in turn, becomes a practice of care for the circulation, return, and negotiation of meaning across the unstable seams between these positions.
About the Author
Tahereh Aboofazeli is currently a PhD candidate in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the A.R.T.E.S. Graduate School for the Humanities at the University of Cologne. Her work explores multimodal knowledge production, collaborative storytelling and arts-based research. Her practice is driven by a commitment to inclusive and decolonizing approaches to knowledge-making. Her academic and artistic work is grounded in long-term engagement with marginalised communities, particularly women workers, migrant women and children. Her doctoral research, developed through *Weaving Memories*, critically examines the marginalisation and exploitation of weavers within the handmade carpet industry, particularly in relation to Persian carpets, and investigates how regimes of authority, gender, and social domination shape authorship, agency, and the conditions of knowledge production. Working collaboratively with weavers, the project explores carpets as medium for storytelling where memory and political relations are woven together.
About the Working Paper Series
The Working Paper Series of SFB 1187 “Media of Cooperation” brings together current contributions from the field of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary media research. The SFB Working Paper Series offers the opportunity for pre-publication and rapid dissemination of research work currently being carried out at the SFB or related to it. The aim of the series is to make SFB research accessible to a broader research community. Publication in the Working Paper Series does not preclude the publication of revised versions of the same contribution in other journals. Contributions from postdocs and established researchers are welcome. The series is intended as a publication forum for the researchers represented in the SFB, their projects, and their ongoing research. Contributions are published in open access and in a limited print edition. If you would like to publish an article in the Working Paper Series, please submit your topic proposal in the form of an abstract (max. 300 words) together with a short CV (max. 50 words). For manuscript submission, please refer to our styleguide.
Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) – Project number 262513311 – SFB 1187. Editorial responsibility: Karina Kirsten, University of Siegen & SFB 1187 Media of Cooperation.