The Fates Are Talking, 2021

28.02.2021 - 04.04.2021

Whitehouse Gallery & Project Space, BE
& Espace Nina Keel, St.Gallen, CH

For the project The Fates Are Talking my aim was to address the textile history of eastern Switzerland through working with embroidery and text. The Fates Are Talking is a contemporary dialogue between the Greek mythological goddesses who assign destinies to us at birth. Clotho spins the thread; Lachesis measures it and Atropos cuts it. The dialogue is embroidered onto a see-through fabric piece of five meters long. The conversation reads as a critical examination of today’s global textile industry, where production quantities are high or for questionable clients but it also involves some personal stories and memories in relation to care. The giant piece was created with an embroidery machine that normally operates at high speeds with 168 needles. I decided to use only one needle, giving the work a much more individual, patient touch. The font of the text was especially designed in collaboration with Fraser Muggeridge Studio London.
At the end of the dialogue, Atropos transforms into CARE and asks for “more modesty, humility, honesty and humanity!”

Download text The Fates Are Talking here.

Online -Talk with Stéphanie Baechler & Fanni Fetzer, Director Museum of Art Lucerne

Watch TaDA Spinnerei Presentation result from the residency (5:22 Stéphanie Baechler) 4th December 2020, livestream
Report of the TaDA resiDency, read more here

Pictures by Ladina Bischof and me. Project space - Whitehouse Gallery, Picture by Hugard & Vanoverschelde

Image - Embroidery, Clotho holding a punched card with 12’500 stitches — Embroidery, Clotho holding a punched card with 12’500 stitches

Audio File Text The Fates Are Talking (Selina Reiterer(Clotho), Anja Toble(Lachesis), Stéphanie Baechler (Atropos). 24.10.2021

Image - Installation view — Installation view

Image - Size: 80 x 60 x 1,5 cm, embroidery, aluminium frame — Size: 80 x 60 x 1,5 cm, embroidery, aluminium frame

Image - Installation view, Textile Embroidery, Size: 150 x 500 cm — Installation view, Textile Embroidery, Size: 150 x 500 cm

Lachesis: “You better spin an algorithm, people are starring at the screen anyway now.”

Image - Speechbubble, alumnium, embroidery, Size: 83 x 55 x1,5 cm — Speechbubble, alumnium, embroidery, Size: 83 x 55 x1,5 cm

Dialogue:

On a winter night in 2020 they meet next to a tall wooden tower. They speak about the dark mill and how they can make 1000000 of clothes for the sheikh. Clotho thinks about how to save the world with textiles through tactility. They think about how they can make the carpet for the Saudi Prince’s Falcons Fly Coach3 but there is a fourth goddess appearing. She cares and thinks about the tenderness of the workers…

Clotho:
I can spin filament 10 times thiner than a hair. What about you Lachesis?

Lachesis:
Ouahhh can you make 10’000 km of this? Can you do 600 meter per minute. I need 60 000 yarns.

Clotho:
Yes stitches in the air! I can do it with the air spinning machine. You know the amount of the stitches is forming the price right?

Lachesis:
What is priceless are the things that make us live!

Atropos: (is blind)
We only die once. We live every day! Yes and the point of life is to live.

Clotho:
The machines are soo loud, are they not going too fast? We are going to lose precision.

Atropos: (is blind)
And they are so functional, they never break! We need the Luddites1 to destroy them ! I’d rather play UNO right now. I have the game in braille !

Lachesis:
No, let’s better put on some music and play ‘Everybody knows’ 2 or ‘You want it darker’.

Clotho:
But we have to make the carpet for the Saudi Prince and continue weaving history

Lachesis:
What, who believes in the future?

Atropos:
I am the future.

Lachesis:
You better try to spin an algorithm. People are starring at the screen anyway now

Atropos:
That’s why we have to change something. Don’t we try to avoid repeating patterns in life but we somehow can’t until we die?

Clotho:
I feel time is overflowing or is it the present?

Lachesis:
Magistra vitae would like to join the conversation because she is worried.

Clotho:
About what?

Atropos:
The planet dying. And there is no planet B.

Clotho:
It is all a day dream. We need more artists, more poetry, less satellites - more stars!

Lachesis:
Now, focus. I always said; everyone needs to go to therapy, you can’t figure out everything yourself, if we stop destroying ourselves, we may stop destroying others.

Atropos: Transforms into CARE and starts to scream:
We need more modesty, humility, honesty and humanity!

…

and the world continues to spin around….

Don’t drop it its FRAGILE

Let’s take care

It’s too fragile

Stéphanie Baechler 2020

Image - Speechbubbles: Alumnium frames with embroidered text — Speechbubbles: Alumnium frames with embroidered text

Image - Clotho: I can spin a filament 10 times thiner than a hair. — Clotho: I can spin a filament 10 times thiner than a hair.

The Fates Are Talking, 2021

Image - Changing Bobine thread — Changing Bobine thread

“The machines are so loud, aren’t they going too fast? We are going to lose precision.” Or: “But we have to make the carpet for the Saudi Prince and continue weaving history.”