Femina Subtetrix – Agents of Speculation

Video, color, 6.45min
realized by proxy through an interview for Digi TV
Realized in collaboration with Sonja Hornung, as part of the research and exhibition project Femina Subtetrix

In 2014, I began working with Sonja Hornung on Femina Subtetrix, a research and exhibition project centered on the history of the APACA textile factory. Founded in 1881 to produce military uniforms, the factory was reconstructed under the Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej regime in just 97 days, and quickly expanded into a vast industrial site employing around 20,000 people—mostly women. Following the fall of Communism, APACA was gradually privatised, fragmenting the factory and stripping away union protections. Ironically, this piecemeal process helped preserve the structure itself.

We gained access to a section of the factory that today operates under the name Father and Sons (Tata și Fiii), which retained some of the old machinery and a number of former workers. We conducted interviews with owners, supervisors and workers, and took photographs of the site. Our backgrounds in textile work—we’d both learned to sew from our mothers and grandmothers—helped us build trust and sustain practical conversations about stitching, patterns, and technique. Many workers recognised themselves in us. Some were moved that we saw their work as skilled and meaningful; others felt compelled to underline how hard and poorly paid this type of labor had become.

The most painful and persistent theme in these conversations was the enduring myth of the “APACA girls”—a term still used in the media, laced with sexism and condescension. The label, applied regardless of age or seniority, tied back to decades-old rumours: that former sex workers had been folded into the factory workforce, that lorry drivers offered rides and more to employees, that the site was a hotspot of inappropriate behavior. We heard regret and even shame. Many workers had come to avoid saying where they worked at all. We were reminded how spaces dominated by women—factories, nunneries, dormitories—often become sites of projected deviance in the collective imagination.

While collecting personal accounts, we also gathered archival media fragments: coverage of state visits by Ceaușescu and Gorbachev, stories about fashion shows and banned music, and post-1990 scandals over privatisation and land speculation. Promiscuity remained a media constant. We compiled this material into a visual map, organised around themes and locations, which helped us trace how the myth had been built and sustained.

When a cultural show on the Digi24 TV channel, Digicult, caught wind about the “art project about APACA,” they asked to feature it. We were unsure how to speak about the media’s role in constructing this myth—on television. How could we critique the mechanisms of mythmaking without becoming part of them? Our answer was to go further into fiction. During the interview, we claimed the site was haunted. We spoke of Ana, a former worker who’d lost her job and home in the ’90s during the harsh years of privatisation, and died with her dogs while squatting in an abandoned factory building that was demolished without proper security precautions.

The crew was hooked. What had been intended as a short feature became a full TV segment with voiceover, dramatic editing, and archival footage. Images of the wasteland alternated with clips of our media map and historical material. We suspect the producer understood what we were doing but didn’t question it—perhaps becoming a silent collaborator. After all, this space had long been haunted by media invention. Our contribution was simply to add another ghost story—one that, like the others, said as much about the place as it did about its tellers.