Strands of Strategy: Tangles of Talk and Tactic

REBECCA DIELE

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Strands of Strategy: Tangles of Talk and Tactic

Developed during the George Paton Gallery residency and exhibition, Strands of Strategy: Tangles of Talk and Tactic invites participants into an unfolding system of play, structure, and connection. Through a game-like process, participants engage in intentional conversation while navigating a framework of wooden looms and blue thread. Each gesture — each pause, knot, or crossing — translates language into material form. The threads become traces of decision, hesitation, and relation, mapping the invisible architectures of communication.

As the game concludes, the apparatus remains: a sculptural record of interaction. The once-active web of thread now stands still, suspended between two frames, embodying the memory of movement and the residue of encounter. It becomes a sculptural object in its own right and a conversation held in space, a structure of relational exchange.

The work reveals the fragility and tension of connection. Each line reflects the give and take of dialogue, where understanding is formed not through clarity but through negotiation. The interlacing of threads mirrors the dynamics of human interaction, messy yet intentional, tangled yet precise, holding both chaos and order in the same breath.

What begins as a participatory act ends as an object of reflection. The installation is both process and artefact, presence and trace. In the stillness that follows the play, the structure holds an afterimage of exchange: a visual cadence reflecting the unpredictable, beautiful logic of conversation itself.

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