Nora’s Sisters

2009

SD video, sound, 7 min 5 sec

Nora’s Sisters is a video that combines archive photos of Kreenholm Textile Manufacture (Narva, Estonia) and a voice over text from the play „What Happened After Nora Left Her Husband or Pilars of Society“ by Elfriede Jelinek. In this particular scene, Nora is warning female workers for the closing of the factory. Women are not taking her seriously because of their unshaken belief in the protection by social democracy. Their speech is a speech of slogans which corresponds to the pictorial language of Soviet propaganda, evident on the archive photos taken in Kreenholm during 1950s and 1960s. Kreenholm with it’s 12 000 employees was considered one of the biggest textile manufacturers in Soviet Union. In 2009 there were only 400 workers left and a large complex of factories was standing almost empty.