EURASIA − A Landscape of Mutability
Mater Mea, 2007
The video work Mater Mea by Rini Hurkmans is part of The Stichting Egress Foundations collections. It is based on two components: a film on laundry hanging in the streets of overcrowded cities in China, and on processional music. The music piece Mater Mea composed by the Spanish composer Ricardo Dorado Janeiro in 1962, is performed by the oldest brass band in the Southern Netherlands. Laundry, as its protagonist, indirectly refers to people and also to the person who looks after things, takes care of everything, or the mother. The laundry outside, waving in the wind of the polluted environment, the invisible act of cleaning and washing together with the processional music makes reference to rituals. Here, the repetition of reproductive labour and care is placed in dialogue with the rhythm of processional scores that are repeated through tradition, provoking key questions about labour, urban space and notions of tradition over time.