Wiebe Bijker and Annapurna Mamidipudi took part in the Oerol Festival 2016 on the island of Terschelling, drawing on Annapurna’s PhD research on handloom weaving in India. Wiebe gave a lecture entitled ‘Is international textile production development or exploitation?’ and moderated the interaction between the audience and the artists after the performance ‘Instant Happiness’, by Cello8ctet Amsterdam and theatre makers Via Berlin.
The music-theatre performance uses the quick turnover of new hypes in clothing to question consumerism in the West and its relationship to labour conditions and development questions in the East. During the interactions there were also ‘special guests’ with specific expertise on textiles in India, development work and textile design.
The concept of Oerol Lectures is that the artist takes the lead by putting issues on the agenda, and the researcher is asked to react and to explore what science and scholarship could contribute to addressing those issues.
