[Track C] One of the great textile traditions the world has inherited goes back to the ancient Andean peoples of Peru. Their weaving and textile-making has lasted several thousands of years. Having been preserved in desert graves for millennia, these textiles are precious documents of an entire civilization: they were among the most valuable possessions of their owners, more valuable even than gold and silver – not least because woven into them was a wealth of information, conveying cultural values, religious beliefs, social hierarchies, and political customs, across intricate symbolism and detailed iconography. Interest in Andean textiles has in recent years extended beyond museums, art historians and collectors. Their unique character has inspired contemporary designers both inside Peru and on the international fashion and art stage. Names familiar from haute couture and the visual arts, have adopted, adapted or creatively reworked Andean textile techniques and motifs, bringing them to the attention not only of fashion editors and journalists, but designers, students, art lovers the world over. At the same time, textiles – combining surface and texture along with being signs, designs and bearers of information – have been rediscovered as a ‘medium’ in and for the digital age, valued for its visual as well as haptic qualities. The course will re-examine Peruvian textiles in their historical and cultural context, and re-assess their apparent ‘renaissance’ in the global world of design and fashion, mindful of the different articulations that such contemporary appropriations can take, ranging from ethnic chic and colonial nostalgia, to installation pieces that use fashion and fabrics to draw attention to human rights issues to the position of women and to labor problems. [Track C]