The Hammock and the Songlines is an ongoing artistic process based on the realisation of a hammock with the contribute of inhabitant, particularly involving the local community. The artist has travelled around Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, Romania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Lithuania meeting people from those places, learning different approach and techniques and collecting yarns to use for knitting.
The experience of knitting coincides with the experience of listening people singing ancient songs from their culture: love songs, songs that tell about separation because of conflicts and war, exile and migration, parting from homeland, happened in different ages and part of their folk history backgrounds.
Maria Chiara Calvani developed an episode of the The Hammock and the Songlines’s project in Kintai town during the 20 days of residency at Kintai Art Residency. The artist has involved the inhabitants inviting them to knit a piece of hammock. Every days Maria Chiara begins her performative action choosing as a place to knit the hammock: the houses of the people of the village, the Vydunas Museum, the church, the shops, the Harbor and the public areas of the village in general. From the meeting and the involvement, a link is born between the artist and the people. The process, the meetings, the stories told by the people are documented in a logbook kept by the artist which will be presented on the occasion of the presentation of the work in different spaces.
