globe

In mythology, the spinner and the weaver represent consistency over the course of time. The thread of life that cannot be cut is just as vital a symbol as Ariadne’s thread, which led the way back out of the labyrinth. In globe, a bobbin turns continuously. In the first shot it isn’t clear if the spool is taking up or letting out the thread. As the rotation continues, more and more yarn coils up and reveals its corre-sponding colourful weaves and forms. At times it appears as a ball of material, whose blue and yellow bring to mind the geographic depiction of ocean and desert.
A journey to a textile factory in India served PRINZGAU/podgorschek as the starting point for the film. The textile industry, more than any other, has become the epitome of neoliberal globalization.
The public awareness of its “sweat shops” has made clear that exploitative relationships similar to those in the early days of industrialization, which were thought to be over-come, still exist today. In globe , the aesthetic visuals are counter-acted by the enumeration of omi-nous facts. A cool, woman’s voice (in German and a man’s voice in English and Italian) speaks about the “social and economic cata-strophe” towards which the unre-strained profit-seeking of a “super class of the rich” leads: the impo-tence of politics in the face of un-scrupulous firms, the gap between poor and rich, and the ecological over-exploitation that exhausts hu-mankind’s fundamental resources. The thread of our clothing ties us to the textile workers at the other end of the globe. Meanwhile, the spool continues to turn. It surely won’t be long before it collapses under its own weight.
(Nicole Scheyerer)

Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt