Backs and Fronts: Stitching Thread and Thought Through Manning, Methodology, and Art

This paper started with a messy embroidery back and a question: What happens when we play with/in mess, attending to how front/back, process/product, art/research, are counterparts in the event? To answer, we passed embroidery and writing techniques through each other, exploring what becomes possible when you think and make relationally, that is, between. Here, we stitch together Erin Manning’s theorization of the event with our experience. As we attuned ourselves to how thinking back-and-front together mattered, we found that our artful inquiry required us to rethink both what we thought and how we thought. Thus, we found that a methodology of front and back was made in this event, as a result of passing between. Finally, we invite readers to experiment with crafting their own methodologies of the between by flipping over their research as the embroidery hoop, and thereby opening the inquiry to its more-than.