Constructed not only of armies of men (and increasingly women), of weapons and their delivery systems, militaries are also made up of the mundane objects needed to nurture and sustain everyday life—clothing, food, shelter. Unravel is an embodied inquiry into the loss and fragmentation that results from the violence of war, and into the relationship between gestures of care and the potential for empathetic connection within the context of anti-militarist struggle. Through a seam-by-seam, thread-by-thread deconstruction of a military uniform Unravel is part mourning ritual and part meditation on the warp and weft of militarism’s fabric. How do the threads of the military-industrial complex bind us? What labour might be required to disentangle ourselves from militarism’s geopolitical fabric?

Articles about Unravel

Vosters, Helene. “Military Memorialization and its Object(s) of Period Purification.” Performing Objects and Theatrical Things. Edited by Joanne Zerdy and Marlis Schweitzer. Palgrave McMillan: London. 2014: 104-117.

Vosters, Helene. Piece/Peace Work: Engendering ‘rationalities of care’ through a Thread-by-Thread Deconstruction of Militarism. Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts. Volume 18, Issue 2, (2013): 4-14.

Unravel and Shot at Dawn are both included in War Imagery in Women’s Textiles: An International Study of Weaving, Knitting, Sewing, Quilting, Rug Making and Other Fabric Arts, by art historians Deborah A. Deacon and Paula E. Calvin.