Kerry Guinan’s new performative installation for The Complex, Dublin is a global-scale artwork between Ireland and India.
The Red Thread is a monumental new production and limited ephemeral performance created by Kerry Guinan with an international team of collaborators. It will take place May 4 - 10 at The Complex Gallery, Dublin as part of the ‘Art Factory’ programme.
For 6 performances only, an installation of industrial sewing machines will be activated live in The Complex. The kinetic installation appears to be self-operating, but there are puppeteers in hiding. Over 8,000 kilometers away, in Bengaluru, India, workers in a textiles factory press upon the foot pedals of their sewing machines. Their incidental choreography is reproduced precisely - and in real time - by the installation in The Complex, with the support of original networked technology. The resulting performative installation overcomes vast distances to facilitate moments of human encounter between people at opposite ends of supply chains, making visceral the extraordinary scale, and underlying humanity, of the globalised economy.
This unique live event takes place over six days and is never to be restaged.
Undoubtedly her most ambitious and sophisticated work to date, The Red Thread is a development of Guinan’s consistent concerns for social relations hidden at the base of the economy. The feat of producing the work has entailed its own set of social relations, which are explored in an accompanying film by Anthony O’Connor. In executing her vision across continents and cultures, The Red Thread sees Guinan demonstrate the surprising capacity people have to interfere with the colossal and seemingly immutable systems we find ourselves in.
The Red Thread will run from May 4 - 10 2022 at The Complex Gallery.
Please note special gallery opening times for this exhibition:
8am - 1.30pm (excluding Sunday 08 May)
Credits: The Red Thread is a project by Kerry Guinan.
Production team: Pret Interpret Clothing India, Robert Collins, Space Forms, Sai Mulpuru,
Bakula Nayak, Anthony O’Connor, Aisling Murray, and Emily Waszak.
Supported by The Complex Dublin, the Arts Council of Ireland, Fingal Arts Office, and Dublin
City Arts Office.
Poster Design: Kerry Guinan
Photograph: Rudra Rudra Rakshit