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2024 TSA Symposium- Shifts and Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles
The 2024 Textile Society of America Symposium, Shifts and Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles, will take place online November 12-17.
The program will include:
– Over 100 individual papers grouped into sessions.
– Over 20 organized sessions, panel discussions, roundtable discussions, and “warp speed” presentations.
– Keynote lectures and panel discussions featuring international scholars, artists, curators, and researchers.
– Virtual artist studio visits.
The TSA Symposium will feature presenters from across the globe, including from Australia, Belgium, Cabo Verde, Canada, Estonia, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Romania, the Palestinian diaspora, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the US Virgin Islands.
Use this link to register:
About the TSA Symposium
The Symposium will take place online from November 12-17, featuring five days of live panels and sessions from textile researchers, scholars, artists, makers, and experts, scheduled across time zones. The Symposium will feature special gatherings available to TSA members. Both TSA members and non-members alike can register to attend the 2024 Symposium.
This year’s event will be fully remote, taking place through Whova, a digital platform and app with all the features you need to attend sessions, engage in discussion, and connect with other attendees. Whova will use Zoom for the video portions of the conference. The Symposium pages on Whova will be available for registered participants starting August 15.
2024 Symposium Theme
This year’s TSA Symposium theme, “Shifts and Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles”, invites us to consider textiles through multiple lenses: Historical and contemporary, Cultural, Creative, Scholarly, Political, Discursive, Scientific. These approaches are reflected in the diverse perspectives featured among this year’s Symposium presentations.
“Shifts” suggests transition, movement, evolution, mutability, instability, uncertainty, experimentation, and being in-progress or in-process. “Shifts” also reaffirms an ongoing process of transformation and change within the Textile Society of America. “Strands” is a textile metaphor that implies intertwining, connectedness, plurality, and multiple parts coming together to form a larger whole. “Strands” is a metaphor for collaboration, joining, and community. The Symposium theme is deliberately open, fluid, and inviting—it invites us to reflect upon the past and to envision and create collective, equitable, sustainable, and emancipatory futures.
Browse the preliminary program:
(Full schedule available in September)
2024 Symposium Goals
The 2024 Symposium will respond and contribute to developments in textiles research and creative
practices. Building on TSA’s 2022 and 2023 Colloquium series, the goals of the 2024 Symposium are to:
-Create spaces to decenter dominant and sometimes-oppressive discourses and frameworks of knowledge.
– Celebrate the plurality of textiles and textile cultures.
-Share and uplift caring, equitable, decolonial, and sustainable practices and models grounded in anti-racism, equity, and accessibility.
– Highlight the work of TSA members.
-Create opportunities for TSA members to connect with each other and share their research, art, scholarship, projects, and ideas.
About TSA
Founded in 1987, the Textile Society of America (TSA) is a United States 501(c)3 nonprofit that provides an international forum for the exchange and dissemination of textile knowledge from artistic, cultural, economic, historic, political, social, scientific, and technical perspectives. Our 800 members worldwide include curators and conservators, scholars and educators, artists, designers, makers, conservators, scientists, collectors, and others interested in fiber and textiles. Established in 1987, TSA is governed by an international Board of Directors.
TSA Mission Statement
Building a foundation of anti-racism and a culture of care, the mission of the Textile Society of America is to foster an international collective community—diverse, equitable, inclusive and accessible—for the exchange and dissemination of knowledges and experiences about textiles worldwide.
We look forward to welcoming you!
For questions, please email: info@textilesocietyofamerica.org