Work-in-Progress
String Games
‘String Games’ has been developing since I discovered the work of Kathleen Haddon [1888 –1961] who was born in Dublin. She was an anthropologist and photographer. Haddon became a foremost expert of string figures, publishing Artists in String, String Games for Beginners, and Cats Cradles from Many Lands.
Untitled, from ‘String Games’, F Hackett (2024)
From my initial interest in the nature of string figures – their universality, simplicity and temporal fragility (yet at the same time complexity) - my ideas about string are growing like plant tendrils: ‘string’ as a metaphor (e.g. in Greek mythology Ariadne’s red thread left for Theseus so he could find his way out of the labyrinth); women’s work in sewing; and then to string theory (the theory of everything) in quantum physics. The project is founded in research on string figures as ‘ways of knowing and being in indigenous communities’ (including ancient Ireland) and along the way broadened to include another early female researcher, American, Caroline Furness Jayne (1873-1906), who also catalogued string figures. The image below, titled ‘Lightening’ is from her book ‘String Figures: A Study of Cat’s Cradles from Many Lands’ (1906)
‘String Games’ aims to be a multi-perspectival response, simultaneously part personal, feminist, contemporary whilst bringing traditionally indigenous ways of knowing from around the globe to the fore.
Self-portaits become re-enactments /hands with string and capture both the playfulness of string games but also the depth of string’s complexity in the multiverse …. in quantum physics, string is a theory of everything and this too opens up many possibilities for the work to be experimental. String is a way of expressing and connecting; and it emerges in mythology as metaphorical and imaginative.
Research
string theory…Underpinning the ‘playfulness’ of string, it both literally and figuratively facilitates the tying together of diverse theories, cultures and metaphors in the contemporary world. I am interested in the use of string as an everyday material and the cones of string used for sewing, weaving, knitting, etc in the garment/ textile industry (traditionally women’s work); as well as ‘string theory’ in quantum physics (as a theory which connects everything). This image is of an experimental wall of string cones made in the studio, inspired by these concepts.
