kuba święcicki transforms obsolete media into a woven memory archive

Woven VHS tapes turn obsolete media into wallpaper

In Stories Seen and Heard (2025), Polish artist Kuba Święcicki transforms discarded VHS tapes and tape recordings into a monumental woven installationasking what happens when obsolete technology becomes craft material. Appeared as part of the Wisteria Foundation Craft Days reportthe project explores how memories survive long after the devices designed to store them have disappeared.

Hanging on the gallery wall, the installation unfolds as a dense black tapestry made entirely of magnetic tape. At its center, hundreds of interwoven strips create a reflective surface that catches and diffuses light, producing an almost metallic glow. Long threads spill from each side in symmetrical drapes, while a curtain of vertical bands runs downwards, giving the piece the appearance of an oversized handwoven fabric. From a distance, the work resembles a ritual hanging or a modern tapestry. It is only upon closer inspection that its true essence is revealed. “The process of creating works from VHS tapes and tapes is a meditation of several weeks and a personal journey back to childhood. Each piece is made entirely by hand, without the use of a special loom. the artist shares with designboom. “The lack of a loom suitable for this kind of material forced me to develop a method that would make it possible to weave with these fragile bands.”

all images by Alicja Kielan unless otherwise noted

memory, records and the afterlife of analog technology

Święcicki created the installation using VHS tapes and tape recordings collected from family members, friends and his personal archive. Embedded within the woven structure are fragments of television shows, children’s stories, radio programs, favorite songs, home movies, wedding celebrations, socials and countless other moments of everyday life. Since they function as carriers of information, these media objects have been stripped of their original purpose and transformed into a new material language.“As a designer who works sustainably, I often look for materials that are normally considered to be no longer useful. By giving discarded tapes a second life and a new quality, I transform them into objects full of meaning – carrying memory, time and personal associations.” Kuba Święcicki tells us.

The conceptual power of the work of art lies precisely in this transformation. Although the recordings remain physically present in the installation, they are no longer accessible by conventional means. The information is saved, but remains implicit. What was once designed for reproduction instead becomes a touch surface, shifting attention from content to material presence. THE Polish artist he maintains the archive, but his stories are no longer available through technology.

More recently, in Heard Stories (2026), Święcicki shifted his focus from moving images to sound. Made from handmade magnetic tape, the shimmering curtain-like installation draws from tape recordings collected by the artist, his friends and family members, including radio compilations, language learning tapes and childhood conversations recorded with his sisters. While the recordings remain physically embedded in the work, access to their content is deliberately obscured.

long threads spill from each side in symmetrical drapes

craft, collective rituals and material narrative

Stories Seen and Heard focuses on the social rituals that surrounded the disappearance of analog media. Borrowing tapes from friends, recording songs from radio broadcasts, labeling tapes by hand, and gathering around a television to watch family videos were all acts that produced relationships as much as recordings. By combining these objects together, Święcicki transforms these collective experiences into a physical structure, allowing memory to exist as material rather than data.

The installation also reveals an unexpected connection between contemporary art and digital culture. Magnetic tape, originally designed for storage and transmission, becomes the raw material for an intensively manual weaving and assembly process. Through many hours of repetitive crafting, a recording-related technology is transformed into an object of manufacture. The resulting work occupies an intriguing space between preservation and extinction, suggesting that memory does not always survive through access or reproduction. Sometimes it endures through transformation.

In Stories Seen and Heard, Święcicki transforms a defunct technological infrastructure into a woven monument of collective experience. The installation shows how craft can function not just as a method of production, but as a way of reinterpreting the materials, stories and systems that shape everyday life.

the piece adopts the appearance of a large-scale handmade fabric

Kuba Święcicki explores memory through fabric-based practice

Kuba Święcicki is active at the intersection of art, craft and design. Trained in both product design and applied arts, the artist has developed a practice that combines traditional textile techniques with contemporary forms of material experimentation. Working with embroidery, sewing, tufting, macrame and woven structures, she approaches textiles as active systems capable of storing memories, transmitting experiences and shaping social interactions.

Throughout his works, Święcicki repeatedly investigates how materials can become repositories of collective knowledge. Whether working with fabric, thread, found objects or obsolete technologies, she is interested in the relationship between touch, memory and place. His research-led practice frequently engages with issues of sustainability, accessibility and material heritage, exploring how contemporary craft can create new forms of participation and embodied experience.

Stories Seen and Heard is part of an ongoing investigation into memory and material transformation that has appeared throughout Święcicki’s recent work. In his 2023 installation Woven Stories, first shown at the Central Textile Museum in Łódź and later at KODE Lysverket in Bergen, the artist similarly transformed VHS tapes into a woven surface.“This structure is based on content encoded on VHS tapes — taken from their reels, woven into a thick, slippery and reflective fabric. The installation was built from recordings selected by the artist, belonging to family and acquaintances. notes Marta Lisok, curator of the Second Skin exhibition at The Central Museum of Textiles in Lodz, Poland. “Their union on a surface symbolically resurrects the past, in the form of a spiritualistic meeting. It comes from the desire to create a community of images from watching the same programs, cartoons, commercials and movies.”

By fusing recordings collected by family members and acquaintances into a single contemplative structure, the project suggested a collective record of shared cultural experiences, from television programs and cartoons to films and advertisements. Together, these works reveal an abiding interest in how recording technologies can be replicated through the language of textile construction, allowing information to be preserved as material presence.

the information is saved, but remains silent