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.