From Parklek to Japan - Woven spaces of Experimentation

July 2026

In Japan, I keep noticing the relationships between tradition and change, structure and play, ritual and self-expression. I’m curious about what happens in the spaces between them.

Here, I weave with old haori textiles, drawing inspiration from boro and sakiori—Japanese traditions of repair and reuse in which worn fabrics are transformed through stitching, mending, and weaving. These practices reveal how materials carry memory and how making can become a way of continuing rather than replacing.

I have also been reflecting on SAORI, the philosophy of free weaving developed by Misao Jo. Influenced by ikebana, she questioned ideas of perfection, prescribed beauty, and technical mastery, developing a weaving practice that embraces intuition, individuality, deviation, and play. By allowing the weaver to begin with a prepared warp, SAORI removes some technical barriers and invites immediate engagement with the creative process.

In my own practice, however, I do not experience structure or resistance as obstacles to freedom. I am interested in what becomes possible when we stay with them, especially in a time shaped by speed, fragmentation, and constant movement.

Working on a small portable frame while travelling through Japan has shifted my attention. Many of the technical stages of loom weaving disappear, and my focus turns towards the warp itself—its tension and direction, its limitations, the knots and irregularities that must be negotiated, and the possibilities that emerge through this negotiation.

A knot does not always need to be corrected. It can be noticed, followed, listened to—or played with.

In Sweden, I use Parklek as a laboratory for my socially engaged artistic practice and inquiry. Originally developed through post-war urban planning, Parklek has become a uniquely Swedish living cultural heritage: a social infrastructure where tradition and change, structure and improvisation, care and experimentation coexist.

Japan offers related traditions. Staffed asobi-ba, connected to the history of adventure playgrounds, create spaces where children shape their surroundings with wood, clay, water, tools, recycled materials, and imagination. Like SAORI weaving, these environments privilege exploration over predetermined outcomes.

Across sakiori, SAORI, Parklek, asobi-ba, and my own weaving practice, I keep returning to the same questions:

What can weaving and the loom teach us about being human?

How do attention, play, and relationships emerge through structure? How does freedom arise through resistance?