"Enmeshed & Entwined: Fabrics of Dependency" / "Verstrickt & Verwoben: Texturen der Abhängigkeit"
In her 20-minute presentation, Dr. Beatrix Ihde-Hoffmann will give an overview of the BCDSS exhibition, currently on display at the Bonn University and State Library (ULB), and introduce the digital exhibition, an extensive online resource that is continuously expanded as we research more and more stories of "fabrics of dependency".
What can textiles – coarse cloth or fine silks, work and household linen, clothes in different styles and fashions – tell us about different forms of dependency: enslavement, serfdom, forced labour, or in our own day, factory work in the Global South? How do social, economic, religious and power-political hierarchies and the dependencies they produce, and the resistance that dependencies in their turn generate, tie in with the production, distribution and the use of textiles? What types of dependency underlie the global trade routes and commodity chains for textiles and their raw materials? And why are researchers from different fields – including archaeology, history, culture studies, art history, and literary and religious studies – currently engaged in investigating such questions at the University of Bonn?
Dr. Ihde-Hoffmann will guide us through some of the many different and varied stories that have been put together – just like a patchwork quilt that has been stitched together from many patches of different origins, patterns and textures. The stories tell of unequal – asymmetrical – dependencies and of resistance to them, by looking at the production, use and distribution of textiles and their raw materials.
Please note that the presentation will be held in German.
The exibition in on display until 20 December 2024 at: Bonn University and State Library (ULB), Adenauerallee 39-41, 53113 Bonn
Visit also the digital exhibition: https://fabrics-of-dependency.uni-bonn.de/en/