Sampler-Culture Clash
David Littler
2007
David Littler has developed an innovative initiative entitled Sampler- Culture Clash. This project brings together embroidery and hip-hop to see what might happen when these two cultures clash. Littler has explored this culture clash by working with a group of artistic collaborators, comprising embroiderers, curators of embroidery collections, performance poets, vocal percussionists and music producers on a range of collaborative events, workshops and activities. Collaborators include The Embroiderers’ Guild, The New Embroidery Group, V&A, Jason Singh (sound artist / beatboxer / DJ), Yusra Warsama (performance poet), Srdjana Sarcevic (film-maker), Rob Rainbow (film-maker), Berit Greinke (sound and textile artist), The Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles, Raw Material Music and Media and Spoken Word organisation Apples and Snakes.
One collaborator commented: “Sampler Project has been a great opportunity for different practitioners to mix, match and clash. Creative people tend to have talents across the board but specialise in one or two areas. People of different ages can be pigeon-holed unnecessarily. This has been a time when embroiderers can exercise their latent writing talents, writers and music-makers sew (some for the first time), an opportunity be given to a graduating film maker – and we have all learned from the shared working experience. Initial study of the V&A samplers got us enthused and the early workshop with Yusra was amazing, getting us to know each other and try something different”
Littler reflects that “The project has brought together a team of creative people to experiment, to question and to learn from each other through the process of research and collaboration. It is a practice-led creative research project. It keeps posing the question ‘What if?’ – what if we try this? What if we mixed this with that? What if he/she got involved? In that sense the research is never complete. It has been an organic process of learning through participation”.
Future plans for the Sampler- Culture Clash include research visits to Romania and Turkey, the development of a creative workshop as part of the Embroiderers’ Guild’s Annual Conference and the development of the V&A’s Sampler section on its website.
www.sampler-cultureclash.blogspot.com/
