The Hand and the Machine Woven—Traces of Production

Factory work in the textile sector of the Netherlands has been historicised in the Weverij Museum in Geldrop. After investigating the industrial heritage of this historic site, Anna Jakob re-enacts the archive at the site, in conversation with the former factory workers, resituating their social conditions within the factories. Reconfiguring a selection of individual elements from both the museum’s own collection and external sources, the work evokes past and present, caught somewhere between workers’ social alienation and the pressures of automation. The Hand and the Machine Woven prompts a new perspective for both the former factory workers for whom the work is developed and exhibited, and the visitors alike.