loomeweight I | PatriciaAuchterlonie

loomeweight I is the first in a series of interdisciplinary performance projects created by Patricia Auchterlonie and Hestor Dart. This project began with building an Iron Age style warp-weighted loom. Our loom is made from foraged materials and hung with hagstones (rocks with a single hole worn by the sea). The loom provides the framework for the creation of a tapestry is woven from ‘trash’ or rejected and broken items (e.g. plastic bags, rope, discarded clothing etc). While working, improvised vocalisations are passed between two voices, undergoing microchanges as the project unfolds. These improvised changes will involve very gradual shifts in rhythm, and melody, as well as experimental vocalisations and other non-sung materials.

loomeweight I is a long-form performance piece which slows down the making process utilising pre-industrial, slow techniques and focuses on micro-changes and irregularities. Through this gentle endurance, loomeweight I critiques and questions mass production within late stage capitalism. It also references directly the historical gesture of singing and weaving as a paired pursuit and explores the close relationship between these practises and folk culture / ancient histories. The project highlighted the failures inherent in a system which promotes marketability and consumption over the sustainable processes of creating and community building. There is also exploration of the omnipresent theme of ecological collapse through the re-use of thrown away objects.

loomweight I was finished in January of 2025 - we cast off the tapestry, the physical catalogue of a year of travel, of weaving and singing:

Loomeweight I toured in the 2024/2025 season, performing at the following:

Eavesdropping Festival, Cafe Oto | 23&24.03.2024

Bonnington Centre, London | 24.05.2024

Starpelpa Festival, Riga | 30&31.05.2024

Helgi's Bar, London | 13.07.2024

Nozstock Festival, 18-21.07.2024

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival | 22.11.2024

Bonnington Centre, London | 18.01.2025

what is it like to watch the work?
(in someone else's words):

I was also taken by “loomeweight” – a two-part performance by Patricia Auchterlonie and Hestor Dart. The duo sang and improvised while weaving on a loom they constructed from materials they foraged in the forest. Singing while weaving is not new, with many prominent songs coming from Scotland and the Outer Hebrides. The vulnerable, hocketing improvisation came in short, sporadic phrases that bounced off the walls of the room, leaving us waiting to see what would be woven and sung in the next phrase. The performance was the pinnacle of intimacy, and bearing witness to the beauty of their experimentation was insight into the beginning of a long and beautiful collaboration. The duo hopes to expand the work to installation-based spaces, and for each performance to be a continuation of the last, both in the music and on the loom, which is something we don’t often see within Western classical or even experimental music.

- about our performance at Eavesdropping festival, published in I care if you listen, written by Michelle Hromin

Collaboration, the loosing of ego, seems part of the ethos of the piece. Each singer responds to the other in a simple call and response structure. There is no pattern, no written notation to follow, each must respond to the other. Listening is as important as sound-making; the sound must be absorbed, brought in before being sent out again, changed, extended, contrasted. There is no leader in this but a weaving of two very different voices. At the same time the act of actual weaving continues, pushing a new piece of detritus against that laid down by the other. A continuous process of bending, choosing material then standing to push it with fingers through the warp threads while the voice continues its own shuttling across the space between.

As an audience it is hypnotic; we are flowing into the moment of creation. As performers it was more difficult than expected to keep that focus and intensity for such long periods. Patricia says at times they found themselves settling into voice patterns, desperate for change. One melodic fragment was banned in the end as it pushed the performance into the predictable. The unexpected, the joy of the accidental, was what made Loomeweight live.

To improvise is to make yourself vulnerable. There is no road map. The voices at times mourning this fragile world, the seas rising, the land washed away; at times strong and defiant holding the transient. The weave is a shroud, is a flag; holds what we have done to the world and the hope that we can be redeemed.

- Jenny Vuglar writes about a year of loom for Caught by the River