Contact Zones. Verbals

Contact Zones are series of textile artworks, that rethinks the human-dog companionship based on Mary Louise Pratt and Donna Haraway texts.
The term Contact Zones was developed by Mary Louise Pratt, while analyzing the European colonialism in South America. The author started using Contact Zones, as social spaces where disparate cultures meet and clash. Later the term was interpreted by Donna Haraway, as a place of transformative life experiences by comparing Pratt Contact Zones and the Contact Zones, found in dog agility sport. That led to further term development by Jessica Lussier and Claudia W. Ruitenberg, who proposed to expand the concept of the Contact Zones beyond its human boundaries to include the meeting and clashing not only of cultural systems but also of ecosystems, in order to gain a better understanding of other-than- human agencies.
Two knitted textile artworks presented at ArtVilnius explore Contact Zones, narrated through the artists’ personal encounters with non-human creatures. In the format of dog agility sport obstables, also called as a contact zones, the textile pieces interwines the words and the sentences from Haraways book When Species Meet and verbal commands the artist and her dogs are using in the sport to communicate.