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VALIE EXPORT

The un-ending / - ique melody of cords, 1998

VALIE EXPORT  is a seminal figure of the European avant-garde, renowned for her performances and video works that have radically expanded the vocabulary of contemporary art.

In The un-ending / - ique melody of cords, the artist presents a close-up of a sewing machine needle moving continuously up and down. The needle does not fulfill its intended function: there is no thread and no seam. Instead, it ‘draws’ a vertical line on the screen, producing a visual record shaped by interruption, absence, and repetition–an endless, unfinished script.

The sewing machine was one of the first industrial tools assigned to women. While it provided a means of income, it also came to symbolise monotonous, underpaid labour and social subordination. By stripping the act of sewing of any productive outcome, Export exposes the mechanical, exhausting nature of this work and its deep entanglement with the history of technology and gender inequality.

Here, the seam becomes a metaphor: for that which connects and separates, and for that which comes into being through interruption. The rhythmic movement of the needle is reminiscent of a monotonous melody–a record of labour without resolution, perpetually in progression.