THREADS 2019 — Loop / 2 channels / stereo sound / col & bw / HD video

THREADS is a story mined from mythology and folklore. It uses two screens and two audio channels to create a highly immersive environment that has inbuilt generative mechanisms. The work deals with the perception of time and space, enveloping and stimulating visually, sonically and mentally whilst also generating its own narrative.

A protagonist, whom we never see, has wandered off the beaten track and finds themselves in an unfamiliar place, their only companion, a red tread [a reference to Ariadne’s thread, the Japanese red thread of fate and the application of logic to a puzzle] representing the continuously evolving story. This fundamental idea relates to the ‘The Stray Sod’, a folklore motif where someone accidentally enters into ‘The Otherworld’ through a series of dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse — with time and memory playing a key role.
On each of the screens we see a different part of the journey, one that takes place along the entire length of a river (itself an additional narrative thread). We witness a series of supernatural events from the perspective of the protagonist. The audio elements are location recordings augmented through sound design and there is also an additional piece of audio spanning the entire work that acts as the ‘glue’ for the overall atmosphere.