Joachim Koester: Howe
For his exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Koester presents his recent work Of Spirits and Empty Spaces (2012), a 16mm film about the American spiritualist and activist John Murray Spear who, along with his congregates at the The Domain, a settlement within the borders of rural New York and Pennsylvania in 1861, sought the designs for a new sewing machine through trance and movement. At the time, Elias Howe, American inventor and sewing machine pioneer had already developed a sewing machine with several strong patents. Spear and his group intended to circumnavigate Howe’s legally protected designs in order to create a new and cheaper machine that would be accessible to ordinary people. Alongside this work, Koester will debut a new film commissioned by Kadist Art Foundation featuring one of Elias Howe’s sewing machines.