This project investigates the relationships between sound, memory, and labour within the domestic soundscape of post-communist Romania, where echoes of the socialist past continue to shape life in the democratic present. At its centre is the rhythmic click of my mother’s sewing machine — a precise, intimate sound that structured daily life in our apartment block. In our home, sound and labour were inseparable: the louder and more constant the click, the more work my mother was doing. Domestic noise signalled effort, endurance, and care. By foregrounding this sound, the project reclaims domestic acoustics as a site of memory, resistance, and critical reflection, illustrating how everyday listening reveals histories of labour, care, and social negotiation.

Built in 1974, our block was among the last four-storey structures constructed before Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania’s communist leader from 1965 to 1989, mandated taller, denser housing developments. These buildings, designed to enforce socialist order, created shared domestic environments where sound travelled easily across rooms and between neighbours. Later architectural changes reshaped these acoustics: the 2000s refurbishments — including added insulation and the removal of the living-room door — amplified sound circulation throughout the apartment. The sewing machine’s click became even louder and more pervasive, intensifying its role as a marker of work and domestic survival. These evolving sonic conditions situate the project within broader social, architectural, and technological transformations, positioning the sewing machine’s sound as a living archive of personal and collective experience.

Drawing on Tania Candiani’s critique of invisible labour and John Cage’s or Cornelius Cardew’s experimental notations, which open sound to alternative visual forms, the final piece translates sewing machine stitch patterns into embroidered and hand-drawn graphic scores.