Rosemarie Trockel
Balaklava
Cologne, Germany: Esther Schipper, 1986
30 x 20.5 x 4 cm.
Edition of 10 [+3 AP] signed and numbered copies
When the inventor of the knitting machine, William Lee, returned for another attempt to secure a patent from Queen Elizabeth the first, she declined a second time, on the basis that the device could take away jobs from her subjects and plunge them into poverty. Her earlier reservation was that the first pair of machine-made socks presented to her were "too coarse for royal ankles".
When Europeans introduced the invention to America in the 17th century, the machine was thought to be dangerous, for potentially leaving women with too much idle time on their hands.
The machine-knit balaclava has become somewhat of a signature work for Rosemarie Trockel, evoking ‘women’s work’, danger and protection.
Her interest stems from the Baader-Meinhof Gang, or Red Army Faction as they would later be called. Born from the radical student movement of the late sixties, the group was comprised of mainly middle-class youth, who aimed to liberate the country from capitalism. Their tactics included department store bombings, bank robberies, political assinations, the hijacking of a commercial airplane, and the seizue of the German Embassy in Sweden. They were often seen wearing balaclavas, frequently fashioned from headscarves.
The name “balaclava” comes from the town of Balaklava in Crimea, where British troops wore them to protect themselves from the cold while serving in the Crimean War, which too place between October 1853 and March of 1856.
Trockel mines the rich dual associations of the form: the representation of warmth and protection, as well as intimidation and anonymity. The simple knitted article of clothing is worn to hike and ski, or so that one might march in a protest rally, rob a bank or commit an act of terrorism.
Protestors are increasingly relying on masks to protect themselves from the use of facial recognition software, which governments are employing to crack down on both illegal and legal public protests. The tactic may be short lived. A Vice magazine article suggests that in the not-too-distant future Artificial Intelligence will be used to identify even masked protestors, by the gait of their walk. Reportedly, one’s walk is as unique as a fingerprint, and harder to hide than their face. The Vice piece was published seven years ago, in 2017.
Trockel’s Balaclavas are typically patterned, perhaps conflating Op Art with craft. The distinctive black-and-grey repetitive ‘wave’ design (see above, top) is derived from a pattern book, and recalls the work of British painter Bridget Riley. It was created with the aid of computer software, and manufactured on a knitting machine.
The Esther Schipper edition is surprisingly valuable for a work intended to be worn, or stored in a small cardboard box. I’ve seen it reach auction heights of above forty thousand dollars. In this respect, it sits among a small group of editions that function as signature works for the artists: Joseph Beuys’ Felt Suit and Sled, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (not intended as an edition, but reproduced several times) and Piero Manzoni’s Artists’ Shit.
