a bit stitch — Heidi Holmström

A Big Stitch
(2025) part as Studija Air, Funded by Goethe institute, European Union @culturemoveseurope and Svenska Kulturfonden

A Big Stitch handles auditory memory as a way to preserve information we can’t necessarily see. Engraved into the skin of the wood, processed one, it stays on the surface like a scar does after it’s stitched up. Using the graphical similarity of a heartrate monitor (ECG) and a soundtrack, it contextualises a way to understand nature. A landscape is temporary, it always changes. Tree trunks are like reservoirs, little data banks; they store sound. However the function is very much determined; either they are resource for goods, or they are protected as heritage.

A Big Stitch refers to an act of reparation and reconstruction. When erosion in effect takes things apart in the landscape. When human behaviour does the same to it. When a cultural heritage site is on the edge to disappear. When different forces stretch the landscape to left and right.
A big stitch is needed, to repair, to maintain, to lift back up. .

Combining site-specific research and recordings made with hydrophones and fieldrecorders, these site-specific notes take shape as an audio installation with a feature of 10 meter long wooden stitch and collective soundwalks around the UNESCO heritage site of Kuldīga.

part of @StudijaSpace AiR programme. Funded by Goethe institute, European Union @culturemoveseurope and Svenska Kulturfonden. 2025.