Panel Statement

Panel: Patchwork Panel: Conceptualising Seams that Separate and Stitch Together

SMS-em­broi­dery-feuil­leton is a way of telling sto­ries to­gether on sev­eral lev­els; an em­broi­dered feuil­leton as well as the oral sto­ries told and shared while em­broi­der­ing it. The sto­ry­telling is sit­u­ated in what we call an ed­i­to­r­ial sewing cir­cle. An SMS about anger was cir­cu­lated on, for ex­am­ple, Face­book, in a dis­play win­dow of the Gallery KRETS and the street-mag­a­zine Aluma in Malmö, Swe­den. This was the in­vi­ta­tion to take part in the writ­ing of a feuil­leton made out frag­ments of sto­ries stored in peo­ples mo­bile phone in­boxes; close to their bod­ies and every­day lives. Par­tic­i­pants could em­broi­der their SMS by hand or for­ward it to an em­broi­dery ma­chine.?When the par­tic­i­pants spent some time in the sewing cir­cle they usu­ally also started to tell the other par­tic­i­pants about what is not said in the short text mes­sage. An em­broi­der­ing in words, and not only tex­tile took place. At the end of the pro­ject, par­tic­i­pants were in­vited to form a tem­po­rary ed­i­to­r­ial board about what se­quence to put the em­broi­dered SMS into. This ver­sion was later pub­lished in the street mag­a­zine Aluma. SMS that were writ­ten to be part of one set of re­la­tions, usu­ally not aimed to be con­nected to other sto­ries nor to be pub­lished, is in the SMS-em­broi­dery-feuill­ton given at­ten­tion and brought into a new set of re­la­tions. In mo­men­tar­ily ar­rang­ing the em­broi­dered SMS into what the par­tic­i­pants de­cided to be a mean­ing­ful story and pub­lish­ing it with gaps and holes, our at­ten­tions is drawn to the seems that sep­a­rate as well as hold to­gether the nar­ra­tive, which con­stantly can be ripped and re-arranged and re-stitched.?Through the com­bi­na­tion of the prac­tices of text mes­sag­ing, em­broi­dery and the genre of the feuil­leton, we put focus on nar­ra­tives and prac­tices that rarely are part of head­lines. Sto­ries that are ab­sent pre­sent.

• Åsa Ståhl is a PhD stu­dent in Media and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion stud­ies at the School of Arts and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Malmö Uni­ver­sity. She holds an MA in Radio from Gold­smiths, Lon­don. Her artis­tic and aca­d­e­mic col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kristina Lind­ström started off at the IT-re­search in­sti­tute In­ter­ac­tive In­sti­tute and was fur­ther de­vel­oped when they re­cieved artis­tic de­vel­op­ment funds from Swedish Re­search Coun­cil (2006-07). At the mo­ment the two are doing a col­lab­o­ra­tive PhD-pro­ject.  Åsa has ex­hib­ited her art­work in Eu­rope, Asia and the Amer­ica and also pub­lishes jour­nal­is­tic ma­te­r­ial in print and broad­cast.
• Kristina Lind­ström is a  PhD-stu­dent in In­ter­ac­tion de­sign at the School of Arts and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Malmö Uni­ver­sity. Her artis­tic and aca­d­e­mic col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kristina Lind­ström started off at the IT-re­search in­sti­tute In­ter­ac­tive In­sti­tute and was fur­ther de­vel­oped when they re­cieved artis­tic de­vel­op­ment funds from Swedish Re­search Coun­cil (2006-07). At the mo­ment the two are doing a col­lab­o­ra­tive PhD-pro­ject.  Kristina has ex­hib­ited her art­work in Eu­rope, Asia and the Amer­ica.