The artist with the travelling loom

The artist Andrea Milde was born six decades ago in Ennepetal in North Rhine-Westphalia, in Germany, where she grew up and finished her education at the end of high school. After that, she began her odyssey with a few short trips around Europe and a long journey to Mexico and Guatemala. She then moved to Aubusson in France to learn tapestry weaving at the École Nationale d’Art Décoratif (ÉNAD). At that time, there was no institution in Germany where she could have learned this art and craft.

In 1986, she made Madrid her adopted home. There she met her life partner, with whom she started a family. She worked as a translator and, whenever she could find the time, began working on the loom. With the financial crisis of 2008 and the onset of gentrification, she packed her bags and left the big city to start afresh in a small town in northern Spain, hoping that a different environment would make it easier for her family to fulfil their dream of leading an entirely independent and sustainable life. She is the mother of an adult daughter and an adult son.

Contrary to expectations, this lifelong dream came true. But only after another move brought her to Berlin in 2017, where she found the people, the space and the financial support she needed to build the KUKUmobil, which has been the centre of her life since 2022. On seeing the KUKUmobil in Monchique, ECO123 became curious and decided to interview the travelling artist.

The other, very personal side of her story is as follows: born into a family of ‘newcomers’ (her parents had come from the East as war refugees), she grew up as a ‘latchkey kid’ after her parents’ divorce and spent a lot of time alone in a male-free household without a car, television or drill. She and her mother spent their free time in the evenings knitting, embroidering or crocheting, while at the weekends she would go with her mother on long hikes through the surrounding forest. There was no money for consumer pleasures such as going to the cinema or taking a holiday. So it was quiet at home: they walked everywhere and ‘were always looking for machine-free solutions’.

Like many people from the generation who lived through the war as children, Andrea Milde’s mother never went to school. Today, this condition is described as being educationally disadvantaged. The experience also helped her to gain self-confidence. Andrea’s mother gave her a lot, helping her, for example, to develop an unshakeable spirit of optimism. But what she did not pass on to her daughter, and perhaps could not pass on, was the desire for social ‘advancement’. Her imagination only stretched as far as secondary school, and the fact that the artist completed her own education with a high-school diploma was thanks to her teachers – and not to her self-confidence, nor to the support or expectations of her parents. It all had a profound effect on her. Summing up, she said in an interview with ECO 123: ‘I have learned to turn hardship, or deprivation, or the absence of everything, into virtues.’

The interview:

ECO123: Andrea, you spent the winter, Christmas and New Year in Monchique. What differences did you notice when comparing Monchique with Berlin, where you normally live? And why Monchique in particular? What did you think of the southernmost mountain range in Western Europe?

Andrea Milde: Well, apart from the time difference, which I still haven’t got used to, the two places are worlds apart. As a capital city with its own special history, Berlin remains a hotspot for art and culture, even if gentrification is also noticeable there and the city has increasingly lost its charm and appeal in recent years. But of course, it is still loud and fast-paced, colourful, diverse, and open-minded, which sometimes leads to a certain sense of superficiality and ‘oversaturation’.

Monchique seems to me to be the exact opposite. I would like to leave Portimão and everything that is offered (and, of course, perceived there in terms of consumption) to one side for the moment. If I limit myself to Monchique, life in the current winter season seems quiet, leisurely, tranquil and manageable, and somehow it displays a human dimension everywhere. And that suits me much better than the artificial oversizing on all levels that I have often experienced in Berlin.

At the same time, I try to imagine what Monchique must feel like in the summer, with more tourism and a few degrees more on the thermometer. Because my image of a location always encompasses only one of its many facets.

Why Monchique? To be honest, it started with something as anecdotal as my Czech hiking app. True to my childhood memories and following one of the basic principles of the KUKUmobil project, which focuses on the physical dimension, I hike around my locations. Conversely, this means that locations with high ‘hiking potential’ are particularly interesting to me. And, since the main route was supposed to take the KUKUmobil from the north-western tip of Iberia (Finisterra in Galicia) to the south-western tip of mainland Europe, and with a bit of luck to Vila do Bispo or Sagres, I looked in that direction on the map in my app and came across the dense network of red-marked hiking trails around Monchique. Then I did some research on nature and forest fires…

And very importantly: since the route is not planned far in advance but is open to ideas, suggestions and contacts that arise during the trip, and since I was able to count on the support of the ‘Terras Dentro’ association in Viana do Alentejo, my previous location, and they, ‘passed me on’ to a similar association in the Algarve, namely the Vicentina association, which in turn was willing to open the doors for me to the Camara Municipal in Monchique, I ended up making a guest appearance here. So, it’s always a chain of coincidences and a willingness to cooperate. It was only after I arrived here that I was told that there is also a tradition here of making textiles, and I have since learned a lot about it.

ECO123: You don’t sleep in a hotel, but in your KUKUmobil, a well-insulated wooden house on wheels, a trailer that can be hitched to the back of an SUV or tractor, a small lorry or a motor vehicle that can haul up to three tons behind it, like a carriage being pulled by horses … And soon you will be towed from Monchique to Vila do Bispo. How does it actually feel to travel in a moving wooden house?

Andrea Milde: When it comes to the move that is now imminent, the focus is naturally on finding a tow vehicle as soon as I’ve been granted approval for my new location. There are several reasons why I don’t have my own tow vehicle, the most important one perhaps being that I only need such a vehicle for one day every two or three months and I found it more sustainable, and still do, to look for a vehicle for this purpose rather than owning my own. The most trivial reason: because when I was ready to start the journey, I didn’t have the money to buy a vehicle and didn’t want to wait for something that might never happen; and also because I don’t like driving and am not very good at it, and others can do it much better than I can, and I don’t feel the need to do everything myself, but am happy to give others the opportunity to support the KUKUmobil on its journey in a variety of ways, for example by transporting it. Admittedly, at the time I wasn’t fully aware of the consequences this decision would have. Now, after more than 20 moves, I have learned to appreciate these consequences.

First and foremost, it is an exercise in trusting strangers, whether it is a professional driver or a KUKUmobil fan who is enthusiastic enough to want to support the project in this way… I am letting go of the reins, to use the image of a weaver. There is still a certain nervousness, but I am practising and I’m getting better at giving and experiencing this basic trust.

Furthermore, this ‘technical aspect’ gives me access to an audience that I would otherwise hardly ever reach, based on my experience. Because textile art and textile crafts are still quickly relegated to a corner where mainly women congregate. Unfortunately. Now the KUKUmobil arouses the curiosity of the male audience, and I find myself talking surprisingly often about how I built it, how it is transported… And once we’re on the road together, with perhaps three or four hours to go, other subjects come up to be talked about… I love that!

Of course, this way of travelling shapes the whole project, because I can’t always plan everything precisely. Sometimes it’s difficult or seems almost impossible to find someone who can take care of transport, and I always have to make sure that the project budget, which is financed by the courses offered, a small crowdfunding campaign and the sale of my work, is sufficient to cover the costs if no one else does. In short: it was a good decision, and it was the right decision. After two years of experience, I wouldn’t do it any differently.

ECO123: KUKUmobil means art and culture on wheels. Please tell us a little about the project and share your ideas and thoughts with our readers.

Andrea Milde: On the project website, www.kukumobil.eu, I have tried to summarise some of the ‘basic ideas’ that underpin the project. These are grouped into three themes:

CULTURAL HERITAGE. First and foremost, my aim is to use the travelling web workshop to highlight one of humanity’s oldest cultural techniques. And, in doing so, to support the preservation of this intangible cultural heritage, even though I believe that this shouldn’t be the task of just a few individuals, but rather it should be done by a society that is committed to ensuring that future generations can also enjoy this treasure. In my opinion, this includes bringing knowledge transfer into the public sphere. The KUKUmobil defines public space as a place where community and collective identity can be experienced. It brings learning and artistic creation into people’s everyday lives and makes both of these accessible to everyone.

SUSTAINABILITY. ‘Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should…’

The KUKUmobil attempts to plan and act on human impulses to an extraordinary degree, reconciling the temptation to go ‘longer, higher, louder and further’ and the possessiveness that has become habitual for many of us with the urgent need to develop sustainable and equitable practices. In my opinion, this requires returning to what makes us human and making an effort not to emulate machines in terms of efficiency, optimisation, productivity, size and speed, but to cultivate the potential for understanding and developing the creative power that lies within us.

It helps us to understand the factor of time differently, in both an everyday and philosophical context; slow art and slow living can open the door to a more conscious way of life, to a different form of satisfaction and prosperity, to a kind of growth that goes deep or high and represents an enrichment for society as a whole that does not come at the expense of our environment. I always find it astonishing that people think about the ‘species-appropriate husbandry’ of animals, about nature compatibility and nature conservation, and that’s a good thing, but somehow they fail to reflect on what species-appropriate husbandry might be for the human species.

EUROPE. Even in these turbulent times, I am a staunch European. I grew up in a country divided by a wall and travelled around Europe when there were still borders, and I am grateful that neither of these things exist anymore. For me, this is a first step towards global citizenship.

My vision of Europe is one of solidarity, a fair and social cultural space for all, based on a long-shared history that has not always been easy or glorious. A space that is home to a great diversity of cultures, landscapes, peoples, languages and ways of life.

I asked myself what I, as a tapestry artist, could do to help make this vision a reality. That’s how the idea was born to capture it on a loom. For a tapestry is a good example of the beauty and richness that such a diverse and colourful social fabric as Europe’s can reveal when care is taken to ensure that it is tightly and densely woven and holds together well.

All threads are important, and all threads are useful, but not when they are loose and tangled, only when they are carefully woven together.

One of my concerns is therefore to encourage us to reflect together on the future of the European area and the future of our society. The tapestry that is to be created on the journey should reflect the diversity of European realities and identities; it is intended both as a metaphor for the social and cultural fabric and as a manifesto for a social Europe at the service of civil society.

ECO123: I am imagining that I could turn back the clock and find myself in a different place and time in life, and perhaps even in someone else’s shoes. If we were to go back two centuries in the history of fashion and fabrics, what might we discover?

Andrea Milde: Well, as a textile artist, I am not necessarily an expert on fashion and fabrics. That’s more the domain of my weaver colleagues. As a textile artist, I’m more at home in the world of art, which has always been an elitist world, because woven pictures have always been extremely time-consuming and therefore expensive, or rather precious, and, as prestigious objects, they found their clientele among the nobility and the church, and later among the wealthy bourgeoisie. This did not necessarily help to establish them on a broad basis so that they could survive in the present day. And, of course, art is also dependent on fashions and trends if it is understood purely as an investment object. But not with the same urgency.

When we look back at the past, we see how important textiles have always been. Textiles have been one of our basic needs ever since we started covering our bodies. They are our second skin; nothing except sunscreen is as close to us as our clothes. They are an expression of identity and individuality, a sign of class and social status. This represents great potential for the economy. And so, industrial textile production very quickly became synonymous with the mass exploitation of workers and inhumane working conditions. When these practices were no longer permissible in Europe, the textile industry migrated to Asia. On my trip through Portugal, I visited many places where the textile industry was still very important a few decades ago. And even though the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ principle no longer applies, and we all know the conditions under which our clothes are manufactured in other parts of the world, the critical awareness that could lead to a change in our habits seems to be developing only very slowly. But at least it is developing. Fashion also has to do with aesthetics, creativity and innovation, and thus with a basic human need for beauty. The problem is the speed with which fashion trends follow on from one another. So here, too, putting the word ‘slow’ before ‘fashion’ would be a good thing. In the past, clothes were handed down from person to person, and, depending on the item, they would last a lifetime. Not that everything was better in the past, but it wasn’t all bad either. My winter jumper is now almost 40 years old. Every year, I look forward to it getting cold enough to take it out of the box. It’s like a good friend, familiar and recognisable. And I’m not a fashion grouch.

ECO123: Your work is called image design. You work with wool and other materials and on a loom that is housed in the mobile wooden house and transported throughout Europe. How does one learn such a profession, and what do you teach participants in your workshops?

Andrea Milde: May I correct you? If I may be pedantic, our discipline is called ‘image weaving’. Unfortunately, there is no really good or more catchy term for our work. Depending on which generation your readers belong to, some will be more familiar with the term ‘picture tapestry’, which clearly refers to the image, but for many also evokes a dependence on the image template, from which we actually wanted to emancipate ourselves. Others will be more familiar with the term tapestries, which served to differentiate them from knotted floor carpets and kilims and protect them from being trampled underfoot. Those who were familiar with the world of textiles knew the term ‘Gobelin’, which is actually a kind of protected designation of origin, as it refers to the works produced in the Gobelin Manufactory in Paris. I like to use the somewhat cumbersome term ‘picture weaving’ because the strangeness with which we encounter this term is like a blank sheet of paper on which I can write a new definition.

But back to your question: how do you learn picture weaving? In the past, as with almost all crafts, knowledge was usually passed on within the family environment. You grew into it, so to speak. With industrialisation, we have largely lost this format. For a certain period of time, art schools took over this task. But there aren’t many of those left either. I went to France at the time because there was no longer anywhere in Germany where I could have received comprehensive training. Here and there, you can still do internships at some art colleges and textile workshops, but the prospects are not bright. This may also be because, to be honest, the profession of ‘picture weaving’ no longer exists, as I have yet to meet anyone who can make a living from picture weaving alone. And training in any craft requires an investment of three to five years. This would have to be financed on both sides, i.e. both for the teachers and for the learners. You see, I have been campaigning for an unconditional basic income for several decades, partly because I am convinced that many young people would like to learn and practise a craft, perhaps even a textile craft, if they knew they could make a living from it.

But, since that doesn’t exist, the only way forward is through internships, courses, self-taught further education… That’s also the reason why I always offer different course formats, wherever I am. I want to invite people to take matters into their own hands. In the literal sense, but also in a figurative sense. Because weaving and life are closely related, and you can think and learn a lot about life while weaving. It’s not just about techniques, it’s mainly about taking the time to bring your mind, heart and soul together. That’s why handcrafted objects are something special; they are animated. And that is why a society that fails to create spaces where such ‘communion’ can take place is becoming increasingly impoverished. And all of us who have the tools, who have accumulated knowledge, who know ways to prevent this from happening, or, conversely, to make it happen, have a duty, in my opinion, to keep trying with great perseverance and persistence. Even against the wind.