“Memory Threads” is an audio-visual installation that sought, through an artistic intervention, to bring back to “life” the former Piraiki – Patraiki textile factory. The installation was realised in 2020 in the context of the wider project: Patras, the City of Factories, Rebetiko and Karagiozis. Danae Stratou created a site-specific installation in space Spinning B, which was one of the central production areas of the Factory.
The artist “reinhabited” the space for a month, capturing with sieved unprocessed salt the “traces” of the (now gone) textile machines, based on the old engineering plan, maintaining the original layout they had in the factory area when it was operating. The project also includes a soundscape consisting of sounds that “echo” the sound of the textile machines such as spinning wheels and looms in operation. The rhythmic sound of the machines coexists with the voices of the former workers as well as Theodoros Stratos, (son of the founder of Piraiki – Patraiki Stamoulis Stratos), as, – while interviewed by Stratou – they narrate the whole production process that went on, in the now abandoned space, decades ago.
The machines’ rectangular cross-sections within the linear floor space, aided by the repetitiveness of their operating sound, emitted a recurring rhythm – a trace of the past that potentially enlivened the memory and activated the abandoned space. The human narratives that faintly filled the air added the ephemeral, human dimension.
Danae Stratou, now returns back to the city centre of Patras, to present the upcoming documentation exhibition entitled Memory Threads – Revisited at the Cultural Centre Tatiana Dimou | Artists. The exhibition is curated by the visual artist Kleomenis Kostopoulos and will present photographs by the distinguished photographer Yiorgis Yerolymbos and by Danae Stratou and a video artwork by Danae Stratou and Vasilis Kountouris.
MEMORY THREADS from Danae Stratou on Vimeo.
