1 Fabricating: fabric fluidities and studio encounters 1 Sylvia Kind and Adrienne Argent Long lengths of translucent fabric hang throughout the studio. Greens, blues, and greys, the colours of the west coast are interspersed with soft pinks, purples, reds and oranges in hues of salmon, coral, ruby, and lavender. In the colours and delicate translucent quality of the fabric we can feel the resonances of the coming summer. It’s been an especially long, dark, and wet west coast winter. For most of the winter and spring clouds have hung dense and low in the sky, hiding the sun, colouring the world in muted hues of greys and blues lending a certain heaviness and slowness to the days. But in the studio today the sunlight filters through the large windows, catches the colours and enlivens the fabric, its surfaces shimmering in the sunlight. With the emerging sun and the lengthening days, there is a sense of lightness in the air and a colourfulness returning as patches of cherry blossoms, rhododendrons, tulips, and azaleas come into bloom and dot the landscape. Even the trees we can see through the studio windows are livelier in their greens. This fabric has a particular quality of lightness as well, floating as it catches the air, lying over bodies and structures but not quite settling or enveloping. It hovers with a lightness of touch, like a caress, luring us closer. The lengths of fabric sway slightly like breath, awaiting the soon to be arriving children. Insert image 1: the fabric studio The studio is a fabricated space, that is, it is a carefully composed, curated, and created space. It isn’t merely a background to children’s experimentations or a container for art explorations, but an emergent space itself always in the making. As a curated space, the studio brings different elements into relation with each other so they touch, provoke, intra-act and encounter each other and create previously unrealized possibilities (Obrist, 2014). This, as Obrist (2014) describes, is the task of curating. It isn’t simply about arranging an artistic space or filling it with art materials, rather composing it so that there is an “invitation to realize projects not possible under existing conditions” (p. 10). Thus, the work becomes an experiment, a desire to produce difference, and a search for “unexplored horizons” (p. 13). The studio becomes a productive experience, where something new is continuously produced, made, and activated. It becomes a lively space of materials, bodies, ideas, and processes that play with, speak to, and intra-act (Lenz Taguchi, 2010) with each other. Careful thought is put into how we might engage with the life of this fabric and what is put into play. We resist instrumental aims as if we decide ahead of time what ideas will be explored, what the fabric and materials will be used for, what purposes they will serve, or what children will do. Rather, we think of the studio as an evolving composition that seeks to enhance the life of fabric, play with its movements, and learn its ways as it interacts with bodies, beings, and things. The studio also holds memories of other art encounters, for example, the work of Kimsooja, a South Korean-born conceptual artist who works in video, performative and textile installations. In Unfolding, a retrospective of her work at the 1 Kind, S & Argent, A. (in press). Fabricating: fabric fluidities and studio encounters, draft version. In D. Hodgins (Ed) Lively Doings and Dialogues in Feminist Post-qualitative Childhood Studies. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.