Sewing Screens
3 channel video installation, stereo sound
3 screens, 280 x 150 cm each
16:30 min.
2017

We are surrounded by three large format screens on which waves of folds of a white fabric are running towards a buzzing needle, resistant at times, yet only to be drawn back where they belong — between the shuttle and the feed-dog — by a hand that appears briefly within the frame. But what we do not instantly recognize is: The hand is the artist’s hand and the fabric is the fabric of the screen, on which its own hem is emerging with a clattering sound. Therefore, in Sewing Screens, as Olena Newkryta calls this three-piece work, “the relationship between the image and its material image carrier is directly linked: There is no video without a screen, and no screen without video,” as she says herself. Not only the material and the medium are interdependent, but also the spatial and temporal dimensions of the work depend directly on its visually and acoustically conveyed content: “The duration of the video results from the duration of the sewing process (15'40''). The size of the screens was determined by the proportions of the video (16:9) and the widths of the fabric. The videos […] show no action apart from the production process.” Gehrmann Lucas, Sternberg Press, 2017

The video installation Sewing Screens focusses in a conceptual manner on the material conditions of image production and labour that usually happens outside the frame of the screen.