The Event of a Thread

Scaffolding, concrete tubes, hand woven textile. 2020.

“As an individual, each thread is prone to stress strain and breakage, but as a collective the burden of tension becomes bearable. A cloth composes a tensile strength. It loops, interlaces, and interlocks with its neighboring threads to create a greater sum of parts.” – Crystal Gregory

The three components comprising The Event of the Thread are seemingly simple: white construction scaffolding, concrete tubes, and hand-woven textiles. The installation’s complexity comes from connections and interactions between these materials changing over time, and reflects Crystal Gregory’s deep thinking about these materials’ individual characteristics and their interactions when arranged together. More than just a static sculpture, Gregory will regularly rearrange the installation to reveal new aspects of the work. Each posture or state of the installation shifts relationships of weight, support, tensile strength, and compression. Over the length of the exhibition these changing relationships reveal a choreography of movement, action, maintenance, and utility.

On January 25th, Gregory collaborated with the dance company The Moving Architects to add the moving human body to the composition with their original choreography. This performance can be seen in the accompanying video.