project image
Jessica Wildman
MORAL FIBER

first performed on September 23, 2015
Processing Fiber at 250 Monroe, Grand Rapids, MI
performed for 21 days in 2015

JESSICA WILDMAN / ANONYMOUS

Detroit, MI
jessicawildman@rocketmail.com
jessicawildman.com

MORAL FIBER
JESSICA WILDMAN / ANONYMOUS

Is it possible to make tangible the cerebral? Trust exists between two people and within the mind, but our response to it is often corporeal. We feel our relaxed bodies consent to one another in confidence. Conversely, we feel it in our guts when we are done wrong. Beyond the human body, how can we physically see and feel human trust? “Moral Fiber” sought to answer that question. A handmade 1930s floor loom was brought onsite. Thousands of hand-cut strips of Sumi Paper lined a wall where india ink pens hung from string. A gold painted locked trunk sat anchored between the two potential actions. Instructions read: please tear off a strip of paper, use pens provided to write confessions and/or intentions, and deposit into trunk; all anonymous contributions will be spun into yarn and woven onsite. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Visitors became active participants as thousands of hopes, fears, dreams, and anxieties were spun into yarn using a handmade drop spindle and woven together over the course of twenty one days. “Moral Fiber” depended entirely on those contributions from the public in order to exist. After twenty-one days, a wall adorned with torn scraps of paper was left with hundreds of staples and two dozen pens hung from linen string. An empty trunk sat open, and released from the loom was approximately 20 ft of woven paper representative of the interconnected nature of human existence.