The film maker's release on Folklore Tapes includes industrial sounds from footage taken at Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire
Artist and film maker Mary Stark's recent project for vernacular imprint Folklore Tapes was inspired by her family's connections to the textile industry, and how landscape and sound re-emerge. Industrial Folklore Tapes Vol III: Film As Fabric is a sound piece that includes a sewing machine puncturing photochemical 16mm film which is then translated as optical sound, as well as Stark's live vocal performance of the folk song “The Doffing Mistress”, and a dubplate featuring recordings from the mill where this video was made.
In line with her remarks about the importance of her processes being visible in The Wire 414, Stark has shared this piece of visual research recorded in an old mill, now a textile museum in the North West England. “I think there is a thing that’s important with textile practice and hidden labour so that the labour of performance is very visible to people,” she says. “I’m really interested in the process being visible. If I have to change something I have to do it physically rather than just click a button on a computer.”
Mary Stark was interviewed by Katrina Dixon in The Wire 414. Subscribers can read the full article via the online archive. The Film As Fabric 10" is available now via Folklore Tapes
