Habi-Lin: The long adventure of linen in rural Europe
Sound and visual installation
Vouzela Municipal Museum
1 August – 15 December 2019
Co-production: Binaural Nodar and Municipality of Vouzela
Linen is one of the oldest vegetable travelers, one that accompanies mankind since immemorial times. We know that the moment when primitive communities began to plant seeds of spontaneous species was fundamental for Humanity to exist. The advent of agriculture, its techniques, knowledge and instruments was therefore fundamental for the emergence of the economy, territorial insertion and social and contractual relationship between human beings. Linen is an absolutely paradigmatic example of how man’s ingenuity was able to intuit the botanical characteristics of a plant and transform it into clothing and nutrition with the help of instrumentation, through the mechanical function necessary to intertwine threads that together form fabric products.
Traces of the presence of linen can be found throughout rural Europe, which cultivation, drying and weaving techniques are as old as those existing in Ancient Egypt or Ancient Rome. At the same time that rural communities such as those in Galicia, the North and Center of Portugal, Ireland, the Pyrenees or the Italian Apennines maintained handcrafted ways based on a self-sustaining economy, the industrial revolution brought with it mechanical looms that became used in mass production contexts in areas such as the North of England, Catalonia, Northern and Eastern Europe, such as Poland, Germany and the Baltic States.
Habi-Lin is a sound and visual installation composed of sound documentation from the partners of the European network Tramontana: Binaural Nodar, Nosauts de Bigòrra, Eth Ostau Comengés, Associazione LEM-Italia, Bambun and Akademia Profil and which was collected in places as far away as Carvalhal de Vermilhas (Vouzela, Portugal), Rompecilha (São Pedro do Sul, Portugal), Várzea de Calde (Viseu, Portugal), French Pyrenees, the Italian region of Abruzzo and Masovian Voivodeship (Poland).
Habi-Lin is a tribute to the people who throughout Europe have worked for centuries to make clothes and other linen fabrics, as well as to all those who continue to love this absolutely unique plant.