Current Exhibitions

Summer 2020

Many of us in the U.S. become aware of knots by learning to tie our shoes.  At first, it seems impossible. How to follow and then imitate the movements of our parents’ fingers as they demonstrate the ins and outs?  Initial attempts result in a frustrating mess. But then it’s magic – we learn to transform the loose, floppy laces into an organized bundle that holds our shoes onto our feet!  With success we discover that mastering the correct sequence of loops and bends delivers the essential freedom of deciding when to put on and take off our shoes. This act of tying knots, a rite of passage for young children, is the same essential technology that in the prehistory of humanity was key to our ability to survive. Lashing/binding/tying is the primary element in the construction of many  basic human objects made of compound materials, so without knots there would have been no spears, no rafts, no roofs, no clothes. Knots remain indispensible today. Not only are they everywhere in ordinary life (in fashion, on construction sites, in theaters, on boats, in hospital operating rooms, etc.) but even the cords and wires on NASA’s Mars rover are bound together with the reef knot and the clove hitch.

Over, under, around and through.

The primary characteristic of knots is friction: the way that two things that rub against one another cling to each other, inhibiting free movement, one loop of rope pressing down against another keeping it from sliding past. We see the powerful role of friction in knots clearly when we look at what happens when it is impossible –  as in the case of the umbilical cord. Though it is very common for the cord to develop loops and crossings that result in knots, its slippery lubrication allows the knots to slide freely up and down the cord, never tightening. Friction is required to make knots bind together, and it grows greater under tension. Thus knots suggest a kind of tightness that is intractable. Indeed, we speak of knots when we describe an unpleasant sensation of constriction in parts of our bodies when we hear bad news or experience a sense of dread: a knot in the throat, a knot in our stomachs.

The twisting, labrynthine form of a tightened knot compels. We use it as an ornament – in architecture, hair, and clothing. The interlocking, complex form has a magnetic power – drawing our eyes in, enticing our mind to decode the pathways of it surfaces, accumulating the force and authority of totem and symbol. Indeed, knots have been associated with superstition, otherworldy power, and the casting of spells since such things have been recorded.  We evoke knots to conjure the sacred union of souls in marriage. We tie them as religious tokens of faith, and to sanctify promises or oaths. Yet even as knots operate in the spirit-realm, their simple utility also steadfastly serves us in thinking and calculating. Knots evenly spaced along a rope provided a unit for measuring nautical speed. Knots in complex sequences to provided a means for record-keeping, calculation, and logging of history, as with the quipus, used by the ancient people of the Andes.

A knot is also a problem. A secret combination of movements. A bump or swelling on a skull or a tree limb that often indicates injury. We speak of a crowd of people as another kind of knot, a “knot” of humanity – tangled, and in motion. The word “knot” here conjures an understanding of the tension that arises from moving past each other, living among each other, intertwining in a community, in a country, in a crowded, complicated world. The knot as a subject became painfully appropriate as we created this exhibit in the midst of epidemic, uprising, and mind-bending totalitarian governmental response: Some knots can appear so intricate that any attempt to understand them inspires despair. It can be impossible to understand the twists and turns in the dark interior of a knot when simply gazing at it from a distance.  Only by slowly picking it apart, using the appropriate tools, can we hope to loosen the frictions, follow the serpentine paths of its loops and bends, until we can see finally how it is made, and learn at last to untie it. Other knots we depend on to hold fast, and desperately hope will never come undone. We watch for signs of fraying and slipping, we calculate the degrees by which the number of turns diminish the strength of the rope. Today, we at the museum of everyday life proffer this opportunity to meditate on the knot in its ubiquity, its miraculous strength, its myriad gifts, its intractable frictions and painful difficulties. The knot embodies something essential about what makes humans human: our ability to create a complex friction-filled series of crossing and loops that can grip and hold tight, and our parallel ability to untie what we have tied.