Real-time Documentary Embroidery
Or, why is it that we feel that embroidery is the best method for documenting reality?

Using real-time documentary embroidery (with no sketches or previous planning) is a challenge in the field of drawing, regarding the representation of reality. The restrictions imposed by the technique: the slowness of constructing a line, one stitch at a time, forces us to economize and abstract, limiting our choices, making us consider and select the most important thing to represent.
By this we are forced to follow a process of encrypting, creating symbolic graphics where details and decorations are considered excess. We find ourselves summarizing and combining elements for maximum capacity of transmitting information. At the same time, the slowness of the proceedings, is considered an advantage, being that it gives us the opportunity to spend some time together on the street, where the events, which are the object of our interest, take place. We get together to embroider, forming a group in which we exchange opinions and impressions. Our activity attracts the attention of passers-by. Intrigued by our work they approach. We let them intervene, adding their suggestions and point of view. In this way, we create a base where we integrate in our environment, giving us a heightened capacity for observation, for perceiving social dynamics and for learning.
Being that we are a group of 'strangers' engaged in an uncommon activity in public space, puts us under the scrutiny of the public, creating a new balance between 'subject' and 'documenter', a bi-directionality where the observer is also observed. As part of this new balance the 'documenter' becomes 'subject', having to respond to questions and events that come up in the social environment.
As a result of spending more time in public space, real-time documentary embroidery promotes a consequential attitude and a more in-depth knowledge of the social reality being documented.


Weave&Construct: A chronology of working together

This venture, which falls somewhere between art and social studies, brought Vahid and Aviva together in Cairo in the autumn of 2008 as part of Fashion and Identity, a joint project by the Townhouse Gallery and the Goethe Institute. At W&C’s suggestion, research was done and work began immediately on producing a map of the city in embroidery. The resulting work depicted the physical and social environment, while at the same time being a public social event, an undertaking combining study and action, a model we wanted to transfer for use in other settings.

Following the initial experiment in Cairo, W&C appeared at the Drawing Exchange Festival in Bristol (May 2010), documenting Bristol’s Stokes Croft area. In July, it held documentary embroidery sessions with a group of neighbours calling themselves the Cruilles from Barcelona’s Barri Gotic, or Gothic quarter. Also in May 2010, as part of an exhibition called El uno y el Multiple (Single and Multiple), a workshop was held at the La Capella Art Centre in Barcelona, which followed an itinerary through the Bon Pastor neighbourhood.

The exhibition in Art Gallery of the Belgrade Cultural Centre will be accompanied by a two-week workshop in the suburb of Kaludjerica.

Text in the catalogue of the exhibition, by Marko Kostic

Art biographies of Vahida Ramujkic and Aviv Kruglanski