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The Revolutionary Machine


3 channel digital video with single channel of audio. 10.45 minutes, 2014.

The Revolutionary Machine draws on a period of research into the textile and garment industry in Bangladesh. While there, I researched both the domestic and international garment industry, documenting visits to textile factories and sari weaving mills across the Dhaka division. I draw a series of intuitive visual connections across all three screens of the installation between the development of computing technology and the first machines of mass production: the sewing machine and loom. The title is drawn from Marx’s writing on the textile factories of industrial revolution Britain, in which the “decisively revolutionary machine” was the sewing machine. Through a combination of image, sound, and voice the work advances the inescapable materiality of digital and networked technology, and how these technologies depend in so many ways on labouring bodies.

Production supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the British Council, Britto Arts Trust and Galway Arts Centre.

Exhibited in The Ghost in the Machine, 2 person show with Marianne Keating, Galway Arts Centre, 2014.

The image shows a white gallery space in low light. There are three screens mounted on the wall, each with a different image projected on it. From left to right the images show; workers entering a garment factory in Bangladesh; cardboard boxes full of completed garments piled high; workers leaving the garment factory via the front gate. In front on the three screens is a low bench for viewers to sit on. The image shows a white gallery space in low light. There are three screens mounted on the wall, each with a different image projected on it. From left to right the images show; a machine inside a Bangladesh garment factory spinning jersey fabric while an employee oversees its workings; an archive image of a magnetic tape operated computer; a mechanical loom in operation with the hand of the operator resting on it. In front on the three screens is a low bench for viewers to sit on. The image shows a white gallery space in low light. There are three screens mounted on the wall, each with a different image projected on it. From left to right the images show; Hexagram 32 of the I Ching in black on a white screen; a screengrab of the artist flicking through photos on her computer desktop with the text 'the value of time' superimposed above it; Hexagram 32 of the I Ching in black on a white background. In front on the three screens is a low bench for viewers to sit on.