Samuel Lyon Spice
When: Knotty 2020: Fragments of a Festival (online)
Link: Full Knotty 2020 Programme
Bless Your Cotton Socks
For the 2020 Knotty Performance Festival I was due to present an immersive installation created from my collection of dirty white socks.
This was to be the culmination of a six-month artistic development programme with Home Live Art in which I was working with socks as a material. The work delved into ideas related to socks within the gay fetish community, examining the way these socks can take on new meaning that supersedes their everyday status.
During this research period I invited members of the public to send me their worn white socks by post via a public call out.
I created a ‘Sock Drop’ installation at Salty: Queer Performance Party in Hastings asking audiences to share their socks and their stories.
I performed a durational sock washing ritual as part of 2020 Steakhouse Live Festival in London.
My fragment for Knotty is a digital zine, put together to explore the themes, which have been unearthed in the making of this new work, ideas of ritual, appropriation and the fetishization of these objects. Examining the overarching question, what do these socks mean?
Bless Your Cotton Socks is part of Knotty 2020: Fragments of a Festival, an online programme of performance fragments created by Knotty 2020 artists.
Slider and Zine photographs by Alice Denny, video trailer created by the artist and Donna Lee Seymour
