Stitch Your Dreams (2010, Helsinki, Finland)

What do you dream about? How do you imagine your work future? What is our role in society? Where is our profession heading? These and other questions were discussed and stitched into a table cloth during a participatory installation of an artwork for students from all departments at Aalto University’s School of Arts. Sari from the Anarchistic Martas helped out with basic stitching methods, so no preliminary skills were necessary.

After the first people had arrived, Sari started to show us some basic stitching methods. Soon, more of my fellow students came by, from all sorts of different departments – Graphic Design, Researchers in Fine Art and Product Design, Environmental Art, Furniture Design, Textile Design, and Industrial Design and various countries: Austria, France, Canada, Finland, USA, Japan, Thailand, Korea, China, and England. The co-created tablecloth became part of a “growing” installation: cress seeds nourished by everybody’s dreams and harvested in a communal dinner.

Thanks to: Sari, Tristan, the participants, Aalto University.