Little did the Spanish teacher featuring in this video know that as she was teaching others around the table about the Spanish saying that proclaims that every day is an opportunity to learn new things she was about to do just that, learn something new. It takes her a few seconds to realise that the French version of the saying for ‘Don’t trust a book by its cover’ mentioned in the conversation is a carbon copy of the Spanish one. Her face is priceless as she makes the discovery. We can only imagine that this experience has been repeated countless times over the last centuries in encounters between French and Spanish speakers. And it keeps adding weight to the wisdom it carries – every day is indeed a chance to learn something new. We have to wonder though if everything new is good or not.
A Stitch in Time is a durational work, combining participatory engagement, collective–making, performance and film. This project ’ draws upon the research of The Open University academics Inma Álvarez and Carlos Montoro’s AHRC-funded Language Acts and Worldmaking project, which focuses on the transformative and pivotal role of language teachers as creative mediators between languages and diverse everyday cultures. The collective stitching was facilitated by the artist Sonia Tuttiett and the whole process at Tate Exchange was captured by filmmaker Marcia Chandra.
Inma and Carlos collaborated with Counterpoints Arts team to design and produce A Stich in Time for Who Are We? Project at Tate Exchange.