Process: Tongue Rug Project

The work of art is therefore only a halt in the becoming and not a frozen aim on its own. — El Lissitzky

With the Tongue Rug : Tapis à Langues project, I wanted to explore themes related to language, placenames and the act of naming, landscape and memory. Displacement, 'getting lost', being 'on the right track', finding waypoints and trailblazing, restlessness, wanderlust and the motivation to travel will come into play in this project.

The tongue rug has often been made out of felt in the past in Quebec and Sweden — it is like a patchwork quilt in the shape of overlapping tongues, often embroidered with symbolic icons. The sladdakavring will grow organically, piecemeal. I will not be able to predict its final shape.

The Tongue Rug is a visual archive of placenames of topographical elements mainly across Quebec with a few Swedish waypoints: lakes & rivers with the occasional bridge & land formation. As each waypoint is documented, a tongue is added and the Tongue Rug grows: its shape is not only determined through time and space but by interaction.

The very paths followed from Montreal to each waypoint create the Path Map. The tracing is aided by a GPS and Topographical maps. These paths – serving as navigational elements – refer both to threads & embroidery as well as to how interlinked bodies of water create networks.

The two main interactive components, a Tongue Rug and a Path Map, are fluid, mutable structures: navigation devices and archives that are prone to change through time and interaction. These growing archives bring an interactive element as ‘latent’ virtual sculptures, dependent on my movements in space and time and the participation of the public.