Laura Balocco

Never One Without the Other

Laura Balocco’s work explores engagement and interconnection. All knitted pieces result from a process with five workshops, including dancers and performers improvising with textiles. The designer observed interactions, movements and shapes. Workshop participants discussed feelings, happenings and interesting intuitive patterns which arose during practice. The textiles with playful colours and a contradicting combinations of yarns are open to a variety of interpretations and modes of wearing, interconnecting people or as mirrored pieces showcasing the multitude of perspectives. The resulting artefacts are neither conventional garments nor predefined patterns but versatile textiles designed to wrap, shape, or be shaped by the body. Presented in a performance, the four pieces reflect and embody key moments and ideas from the workshops, merging material, movement and emotion.

Grounded in decolonial theories that value bodily perception and the multiplicity of realities, this MA thesis project investigates participation, engagement, and intuition as starting points towards a more inclusive creative practice. Instead of relying on personal interpretations of visual research, Laura Balocco organised five workshop sessions with performers and dancers, observing their improvisation with secondhand textiles. These sessions emphasised reconnection to bodily felt perception while connecting and interacting in a collectivity. The material gathered served as inspiration for the final production.

– By detaching from my usual creative process, I gave space for dialogue that embraces different perspectives, leading to co-creation and shifting the focus from a singular vision to collective expression. When I handed over the reins of the choices, a world of possibilities opened to me. The resulting knitwear collection presents a set of open-ended pieces rather than garments. 

The collection incorporates jacquards to play with colour and yarn characteristics, ribs to emphasise elasticity, and devoré print. Material choices reflect the participants’ emotional, relational, and sensorial perceptions.  Patterns are inspired by the idea of used and found fabrics, with an ironic tone given by the fluffy effects of some yarns and playful patterns. Stripes play a crucial role since they reveal the movements of a body underneath, as was happening in the workshops. bodies’ movements combined and interwoven created a whole new body. The human element becomes the protagonist, creating the final work with the act of wearing. 

– My fascination for the interconnectedness of bodies through textiles and bodies’ sculptural compositions had a central role also in the prototyping phase, where I employed an open and intuitive approach in the shape design while testing what possibilities of exploration the piece was suggesting. 

The final works include open elements—circles, sleeves—meant to be worn or interpreted freely. The project culminates in a performance, where two dancers and workshop participants will bring the textiles to life through intuitive movement.