This Eternal Thread

This Eternal Thread

Single Channel Video
7 minutes 49 seconds
2016-2019

Three women wait and watch in an abandoned stone fortress, dripping milk, pulling an endless thread from endless blackness.

Filmed in a preserved New York State Civil War fortress, This Eternal Thread features three young black women performing the strange task of pulling threads from an unknown origin. They are shown both as a group and as individuals, pulling and weaving the thread as milk and water drip around them from within their stone setting. The central image of three women pulling thread is mythological, drawn from the Greek story of the Three Fates, who measured out the lives and destinies of humanity. But where the mythological image focuses on the Fates drawing forth threads for the world, the three women in This Eternal Thread are inwardly focused—their presence and actions being for themselves, and not the world. As the performers move throughout the piece, a haunting sound score blends distorted vocalizing and the sound of rushing water, building toward a swell of instrumentation and spoken text. As the work moves toward its apex, the image of milk appears, dripping from white cloths and pooling around the feet of the performers.

This Eternal Thread is a part of the HUNGER video cycle. It is the second piece within the series and is followed by Time is a river, where the image of milk will be maximally expanded upon.