In the midst of growing expansion of digital media and communication technologies we find embroidery the most accurate technique for documenting reality. With no sketches and previous planning, documentary embroidery presents a challenge in the field of drawing. The restrictions imposed by the technique (the slowness of constructing a line, one stitch at a time), force us to economize and abstract, limiting our choices, making us consider and select the most important thing to represent. The slowness of the process is an advantage. It give us the opportunity to spend some time together at venues where events, the object of our interest, take place. Together, we experience a new/old way of observing and interacting. So far, documentary embroidery happened with different groups of people in the bars, streets, offices and suburbs of Cairo, Bristol, Belgrade, Warsaw, Barcelona …

During the festival and within the framework of the Bring In Take Out Living Archive we will be constructing a collaborative tapestry based on a protocol that would make it form a unique piece, always extendable in all directions, a kind of social fabric made stitch by stitch.

Workshop

Real-time Documentary Embroidery – the most efficient way to document contemporary reality.

Vahida Ramujkić (SRB) was born in Yugoslavia, lived in Spain, returned to Serbia. From 2001 to 2006 Vahida closely collaborated with Laia Sadurni in Rotor collective (Barcelona) organizing urban expeditions trough urban territory of ground, water and air (rotorrr.org). In 2006 she completed her works on a book Schengen with Ease, a text book for getting acquainted with the bureaucratic procedures for regulation of foreigners in the European Union. In 2006 Vahida also founded the Disputed History Library, collecting history text-books from the ex Yugoslav space, organizing workshops where different historic narratives are analyzed and interpreted in new collage issues. In 2007 she initiated the real time Documentary Embroidery project together with Aviv Kruglansky, which is an on-going project that takes place in different suburb areas. In 2011 she initiated Microcultures project with Moshe Robas and Aviv Kruglansky. Together, they experiment with fermentation processes in culinary, social and economic sense. Vahida doesn’t believe – she prefers to experiment.

Aviv Kruglansky (E) learned to crochet and knit in his mother’s womb. It was the only work his mother could do during the pregnancy. As an adult, Aviv crochets, embroiders and sews as part of global movements for social change. His efforts to ward-off gentrification, stop global warming and end the violence in Israel and Palestine have so far been unsuccessful.