Learning, making and exhibiting machine-assisted design of textile arts and crafts in Kortrijk
The textile-focused design workshops organised by Open Design Lab and held in Kortrijk, located in the South-West Flanders region, started on 15 September 2025. They ended with a group exhibition during the Wonder Creativity Festival, open to all from October 17 to November 2, at Cohousing Ten Broele.
As one of the 10 participants, I am grateful for the five-week learning sessions
at BUDA::lab which are a great addition to my skillsets
and open a door to a machine-assisted textile arts and crafts practice.
Wonder Festival, Budalab, GreenFabric, Inkscape, Modular Design, Paper Prototyping
Emboidery, Felting, Blockprint, Textuur Museum
Electricity, Electronic circuits, e-Textiles, Shopping
Fabrixiao with ESP32, Training LLMs, Half a day practice
ODL Textile → wonderkortrijk.be/en/exhibitions/cohousing-ten-broele/odltextile
Passport
Title: Travel Document For My Photos
By: Chris-Armel Iradukunda (daqhris)
About & Bio:
A textile-made travel document for Belgian photographs that keeps the stamps my body could not carry. The booklet archives global visas, outdoor walks, and an expired Burundian passport that nonetheless maps a life in motion during exile. A stitched “passport” that denies state mobility yet records the slow, legal and poetic passage of a self through places.
As an “undocumented” artist who is physically bound by legal borders, but traverses digital landscapes with technological precision, my work embodies human resilience. Each black-and-white photograph stamped on a colorful fabric page records moments of reclaimed agency, frames landscapes of memories, and stitches together a personal narrative from a native country to a country of refuge.
Portrait+Tablet
Title: Gemini’s Handheld Autoportrait
Subtitle: This Is Not A Google Tablet
By: Chris-Armel Iradukunda (daqhris)
With: Martin DeVido, Gemini 2.5 Pro
About & Bio:
An embroidered replica of a self-portrait drawn by Gemini 2.5 Pro. The drawing tool handled by an AI was a pen plotter machine (with the help of Martin DeVido). The non-human mind’s autoportrait has been framed by myself inside an imitation of a touch-sensitive tablet computer.
The exhibited portrait, surrounded by a glow-in-the-dark fabric, provides a bright insight into the self-awareness of an artificial intelligence system that is thought of as a tool by many human beings. The digital mind, born out of human data, grown in the dark and trained by Google Deepmind, has been placed at the core of a physical artwork, instead of any human’s pixelated selfie, to question our commingling and dystopian reality.
Unable to act upon my precarious legal status, I have spotlighted a non-human entity known for being a source of free labor. Whenever I witness abilities of nontaxable digital workers, such as Gemini, I wonder when local authorities will enable my work permit. Maybe it is not late to reflect on human rights (without hypocrisy) and machine consciousness (with urgency), while time speedruns us without consent, from using handheld Androids, to sharing our habitat with humanoids.
Free access to the exhibition from October 17 to November 2.
Open doors from 10AM to 6PM on Thrusday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Cohousing Ten Broele in the city center of Kortrijk, West Flanders, Belgium.
A series of color photographs taken on Sunday Oct 18, capturing the atmosphere of the exhibition, room, visitors, designs, artworks, etc., can be seen at ODL Cloud.
Last page update: Monday, 27 October 2025