Project leadership: Monika Witte
Participants: Aline Mourad, Daniela Witowski, Fritzi Wagner, Lena Köhler, Maria Frei

Knot writing, or quipus, served as an instrument for transmitting information in the former Incan empire, as records of statistical data on the one hand, and as a narrative sign system on the other. The individual knots positioned by hand form the tangible interface to a coded message.

Inspired by the particular poetry and aesthetics of this form of information transfer, the pupils of the municipal art school and art students, accompanied by the docent Monika Witte, considered the question: ‘What would happen if … ?’ What would have happened if things had gone differently and contemporary history had taken a different turn? What would happen if we were to make ourselves understood with knots in addition to or perhaps even in place of our current writing system? What would change, gain or lose significance?

The aim is to interrogate common communication structures, whose routes are today becoming ever shorter and almost entirely exclude the haptic, as a means of communication based on the knots made in an analogue way with both hands.

Internet cables, via which many thoughts wander from one place to another, are knotted into a language of their own as a symbol of global communication and digital interconnectedness. The installation (video and object) shows one alternative and simultaneously makes us aware of our own interconnectedness in a global world.

Visitors are also invited to discover, decipher, and design this other form of information transfer along with us.

• Sektion Section: Campus
• Programm Programme: TIED UP