Flowers for the Audience

In conjunction with the exhibition, Camouflage, COR&P published Flowers for the Audience, a collection of interviews and notes on the topic of film editing. The book features interviews between Gschwandtner and Leslie Thornton and Pat Ferrero, two filmmakers who have influenced and inspired her work, alongside research materials from her studio practice and images of recent quilts.
Gschwandtner’s practice brings together experimental filmmaking methods with the forgotten history of early cinema, which borrowed sewing machine mechanisms for advancing sprocket holes, and employed women as editors because of their agile sewing fingers. By running her thread through the sprocket holes, Gschwandtner stitches together the histories of film and craft by bringing together the multiple meanings of “suture.”

Both Thornton and Ferrero have been instrumental in Gschwandtner’s work. Gschwandtner studied under Thornton at Brown University, where she learned both liner and non-linear filmmaking techniques. Ferrero’s films are used as physical source material in many of Gschwandtner's quilt works. These films about quilt-making mirror the artist’s own manual labor, as well as the history of tactile engagement with cinematic materials. - The Center for Ongoing Research & Projects