The video work Girl Folding a Handkerchief by Alexandra Pirici takes its title from a cyclographic capture, an image translating the movement of a young woman folding a handkerchief into a geometry of light curves. Made by industrial engineer Frank Gilbreth in the beginning of the 20th century, as part of the time and motion studies developed together with his wife Lilian, it reflected a new process of visualizing, standardizing and making workers’ movements more efficient, known as the scientific management of labor.

Looking at ways in which the materiality and particularities of moving bodies disappear into abstraction, Girl Folding a Handkerchief traces a partial history of anonymization and automation – of both physical and cognitive labor. From the industrial revolution to present day forms of Artificial Intelligence, it shows this history overlapping with the viewing of living things as well-delimited, exploitable resource pools. But its poetic inserts also attempt to produce new metaphors for coexistence, while a goodbye-song to an old world coming-apart hopes to announce a new one.

Since 1971, the Video-Forum of Neuer Berliner Kunstverein has been regularly co-producing new video works by international artists – most recently a. o. by Candice Breitz, Halil Altındere, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Sanja Iveković, Alesandro Cesarco, Arno Brandlhuber / Christopher Roth, Ming Wong, Ciprian Mureşan, Anetta Mona Chisa / Lucia Tkáčová, Christian Jankowski, Bjørn Melhus, Mathilde ter Heijne or Artur Żmijewski.

The premiere of the latest coproduction Girl Folding a Handkerchief (single-channel video, 2021, 22:23 min) by Alexandra Pirici took place on October 14, 2021, at 6.30 pm in the premises of the n.b.k. Video-Forum, followed by an artist talk with Alexandra Pirici and Anna Lena Seiser (Head of Video-Forum). The video work has been accessible on the n.b.k. website from October 15 until October 18, 2021.

Producers: Alexandra Pirici & Andrei Dinu with Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin

Cinematography and camera: Barbu Bălăşoiu, Andrei Dinu

Performers: Alexandra Pirici, Maria Mora

Set design and costumes: Andrei Dinu

Music: Adda Kaleh & Suzanne Kraft

Special thanks to: The National Dance Center, Bucharest (CNDB), Tatiana Crihan, Alina Nedelcu