Orienteering with double moss: The cartographies of half/angel’s the knitting map

This article analyses The Knitting Map, a large-scale, durational textile installation by the performance production company half/angel. It examines the ways in which technology was used in The Knitting Map to connect the weather and the levels of busyness in Cork City (Ireland) to a community of knitters, and a year-long process of hand-knitting. The article focuses on processes of translation as a fundamental operation within this ambitious work; translation of digital data into knitting patterns, as well as technology into something familiar to a community of knitters. The article suggests that by contextualising The Knitting Map’s digital technology, the processes and language of ‘knitting Cork’ became dialogic across generations. The Knitting Map is then framed within a broader history of radical textile projects, and community art works. The article closes with an analysis of a year-long series of knitting performances by Jools Gilson- Ellis, staged in public sites in Cork City and used as a performative strategy of engaging participants both actually and symbolically in the project.