The Ladies’ 500 Metre Challenge is inspired by Olympic-type competitions where participant’s skills, speed and gameness are publicly put to test with the goal of destroying the competition and achieving an “ultimate” victory. Two adapted looms are threaded together as the playing field for teams to face off in a refereed weaving challenge each team has two players. The fabrics are created “backwards” from the centrepoint of the contraption outwards, so as each round of the competition ends, the looms become further and further apart. The Referee dictates specifications for each round and assures that each participant is in line and following the rules. Once all of the rounds are over, resulting fabrics are cut off of the looms and pinned up for the Referee to judge completion, creative merit and overall quality.
Part of the Craft Off serires for M:ST 5
Wednesday Lupypciw (Canada) is from Calgary, Alberta, where she pursues a video and performance art practice. To make money she is a part-time maid. She also maintains a concurrent practice in textiles — weaving, machine knitting, embroidery and crochet — but this is done mostly while procrastinating on other, larger projects. The performance art collective LIDS, or the Ladies Invitational Deadbeat Society, a loosely knit group of purposefully lazy womenfolk, is one of those projects. She is a Fibre program graduate from the Alberta College of Art + Design, and has worked and exhibited in various artist-run spaces throughout Canada including the Textile Museum of Canada, The Art Gallery Of Alberta, The Banff Centre, The Klondike Institution for Arts and Culture, TRUCK and Stride galleries, Harbourfront and Nuit Blanche in Toronto, and EMMEDIA.
Co-presenters
