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New York Artist Bridges the City by Weaving Words into Books

Elena Berriolo's book was sewn by a machine across 26 miles on the New York subway.
Image of A Book as A Bridge from Wall Street to the Bronx, 2015. Courtesy of Elena Berriolo

On November 11, 2015, at 9:30 PM, the artist Elena Berriolo boarded the Bronx-bound 2 train at Wall Street Station. Cradling a sewing machine and a blank accordion book crafted of tarlatane and paper, Berriolo bundled herself into the far end of a subway car, peering out at the masses of tired, end-of-day workers and commuters encased in the silent carriage. As the train pulled out of the station, she unfolded the first page of the book, carefully placing it under the needle of the machine, and began to sew, each page unravelling as an unbroken line started forming. When Berriolo reached her final destination at 149th Street in the Bronx, the book had unfolded across the entire length of the train, the pages in the laps and hands of commuters who were all connected by a simple line of thread.

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Berriolo is a performance and installation artist who has committed to working solely with books since 2009. She has completed two more projects on public transit after the A Book as a Bridge from Wall Street to the Bronx—one going the opposite direction, marking New York’s economic flow from poverty to capitalism, and one from Manhattan to Staten Island on the ferry. The artist told The Creators Project about the project, which she sees as socio-political reparative endeavour intended to build bridges across communities. Citing her craft of stitching and sewing as a metaphor for connection, she says in her book Why Didn’t They? (2015): “It is true most lines are made to divide, but it is only the sewn line, coming from its peaceful history of linking and repairing, [that is] able to separate without cutting off.”

Image of A Book as A Bridge from Wall Street to the Bronx,” 2015. Courtesy of Elena Berriolo

The Creators Project: When and how did you start working with literature?

Elena Berriolo: My interest in the written word came after my pursuit of the book as the oldest three-dimensional, compact, time machine—but it is hard to work within the book format without thinking about the word. At the beginning of my commitment in 2008-2009, the word was a way for me to represent sounds and define/organize time on a page. At that time my texts were usually small quotes from known writers, and only occasionally my own words.

Afterwards I became interested in the “word” in Jewish culture—my husband is Jewish—in a society where the representation of images was forbidden. The word is visually extraordinarily important, its power often enhanced by abstract or decorative compositions around it.

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Summer Day, I Am A Beetle, 2014. Sewn thread, ink, perforation, printed leaves on paper. Courtesy of Elena Berriolo

A Book as A Bridge is an inclusive, participatory piece – tell me a little more about how you developed the different aspects: the holding of the pages between subway passengers, the length of time to create a book, the use of the subway as a carriage of creation.

The idea of “A Book as a Bridge” came to me after my performance Transcription of Piero Manzoni’s Infinite Line With Sewing Machine. In that performance, while sewing a line on a ribbon, I also sewed on about 25 helium balloon strings, the balloons lifting the line among the audience and building an arch, growing from my location to the door. At the end of the process I asked the audience to hold the line in their hands, then take it outside and release it.

Image of A Book as A Bridge from Wall Street to the Bronx, 2015. Courtesy of Elena Berriolo

During the performance I realized how people became emotionally involved: there was a sewing machine line growing and moving through the space and at the end everybody was invited to touch, hold and carry that sewn line outside. There I had the idea to have the line grow inside a moving vehicle, where people, instead of balloons, could hold the growing line on the book.

I was very nervous before the performance on the 2 train on November 11th and 23rd. Most people on the train were exhausted. Nevertheless some of them reacted—some pretended not to see, hiding their smiles on their cell-phones, some asked questions, some had violent reactions but they did not dare attack a sewing machine. While sewing, I thought: “I am writing a poem,” and I still think I did.

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Because I changed stitch pattern at every station and I stopped sewing every time the train stopped, you can “read” the book, as the line on it will tell you about the distance from station to station, the number of stops, how bumpy the ride was, the sound of the sewing…

Detail shot of A Book as a Bridge from Wall Street to the Bronx, 2015. Courtesy of Elena Berriolo

You say in your statement on A Book as A Bridge, that you wished to connect the communities of the Stock Market to the People Market.

I chose to go from the Bronx to Wall St. and back and from the Financial district to Staten Island because I can see a gap separating the communities. It is known they are in need of a re-connecting bridge and must realize they are part of the same “fabric.”

Image of A Book as A Bridge from Wall Street to the Bronx, 2015. Courtesy of Elena Berriolo

In a previous work, Sewing Music into Visual Art: The Sound of Silence, you trace the relationships between music and the practical rhythms of a sewing machine. How did this develop?

Because of the possibilities offered by the book format, in 2011 I started working with music trying to transcribe/translate sound in a book with sewing machine, pen and watercolor.

Here is my process: I choose a 3-to-5-minute track so that it would last about the length of time it takes for you to look at and turn the 16 pages of one of my books. I set the track in a loop to be able to work with no interruptions. I push the pages under the machine foot as in a dance to the music (but also to my own beat), with no plan in a totally visceral way, working from page one to page 16. Because of the sewing machine’s ability to produce a real three-dimensional line embracing the two sides of the paper, it is possible to define time and space while working with the page—when I sew on side one of the first page I can only imagine what I will see on side two. As soon as I am able to turn the page, I am confronted with the future side of what was the present on page one, along with the memory of its past, and therefore I can proceed by sewing on page three, again reaching into page four with my needle, drawing my embroidered line while it is embracing the two sides of my page.

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Whenever I describe this process to a writer, I am surprised to see how some of them use a somewhat similar process, metaphorically using the two sides of the page as I do. Therefore I must assume I am “writing.” After all, in the Western world, isn’t writing the organization of sound-defining signs? Isn’t the sewing machine a writer by definition, since all its patterns are beats?

Image of A Book as A Bridge from Manhattan to Staten Island, 2016. Courtesy of Elena Berriolo.

How does one 'read' the books you create?

Because the sewing machine line embraces two sides of the page there is no way to erase nor exclude anything I do on my 16 page books.

All of my books have a beginning (the first page being the only white page I work on), an apex, or an area of the book where I can see I have lost some control, and an end where I regain some control. The last page is also special since it does not lead anywhere.

Touching is an important part of reading, the hands of the reader are for me as important as the eyes. While I make a book I make it for your hands as well as for your eyes also. The time you spend turning the pages, finding their other side, contributes to your experience of the book.

Detail of A Book as a Bridge from Wall Street to the Bronx, 2015. Courtesy of Elena Berriolo

Image of Perforation of a Fibonacci Sequence in a Book, 2014. Courtesy of Elena Berriolo

Image of Transcription of Piero Manzoni’s Infinite Line With Sewing Machine, 2013. Courtesy of Elena Berriolo

Image of My Thorny Rose Brush, 2015. Courtesy of Elena Berriolo

Elena Berriolo presents The Making of a Book with Sewing Machine in the New York City Subway on June 22, 2016 at the New York Transit Museum's "Open Platform" nightClick here to visit Elena Berriolo's website.

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