Textile Punctum is a small essay on the embroidery of memory,
provided in a package together with needle and thread. The essay is an
intertextual comment on Roland Barthes’ book Camera Lucida. Bar-
thes’ book is an inquiry into the nature and essence of photography,
especially how memory and time is manifested through the photograph-
ic image. In his book he examines the emotional effects of special
details in certain photographs which often gives unintentional and
deeply personal signals. The spectator is effected by it later, and the
detail provokes memories that acts as punctum, a pinch or an arrow,
shooting out of the image, wounding the spectator. It is a direct and
deep relationship between an anonymous photograph and a subject.
The essay is also an eulogy to Barthes’ late mother and a reflection
of death as well as memory. It specifically discusses a photograph of
Barthes’ mother in a winter garden, but the image is never shown.
The Textile Punctum essay takes Barthes’ discussion further and
explores how punctum can be embroidered onto clothes. This marking
of memory is usually discouraged in regards to clothes, as all marks
of life should be washed away or patched up. Instead the essay exposes
the special character a garment can get by marking memory upon it.
The point of departure is a personal experience and the embroidered
contours of a wine stain, never to be show in the essay. However, the
reader is offered an own kit with needle and thread to manifest their
own memories onto their garments.Examples of the photos discussed by Barthes (above)