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"invisible" Tag


Your life on a thread


Tuesday, November 25, 2014

In the Boijmans Van Beuningen currently is an Exhibition called: The Future of Fashion is Now. One of the participates is Lara Torres.
Her work ‘an impossible wardrobe for the invisible’ takes part in the ‘New Values and New Stories’ part of the Exhibition.

 

 

About the part ‘New Values and New Stories’ the autor, Jose Teunissen, writes in the book of the exhibition: “Today’s designers are trying to recline and recalibrate the fashion system in a number of ways. The designers of the new generation are quick to criticise the fashion system, the compulsion to engage in overconsumption, and concepts such as brand identity a local identity, but they are also importing fashion with a new set of values. One important example is the Slow Fashion movement, whose goal is to render the fashion production system more transparent by using as many local materials as possible and by setting up a circular economy with direct lines running from producer to consumer. It is essential that the fashion product itself acquires a new, sustainable value so that its life extends beyond that of a single season.”

I underlined some words to make the connection to Torres reframing those words.
Overconsumption’ Her collection can only be worn once. What does that have to do with overconsumption? The waste can also be dissolved. And because of the dissolving there is a need for more clothes because you cannot wear the clothes again. Is ita good thing, to only wear clothes once?
Slow Fashion’. Her clothes dissolve slowly, but are gone forever. If it is connected to the ‘Slow Food’ movement, does it take long to make the clothes, are they worth the wait? Torres made such a fast disappearing collection, that the focus on a longer staying collection (not only one season) raises. And what about ‘Slow Design‘ movement in general. Is her work also an ongoing project? Comparing it to her previous work, maybe it is, maybe only for herself and not for her projects.
Transparent’. Her work is literally transparent when it is dissolved.
Direct lines’ She is using normal seams, so you could say that that’s literally, again, the direct lines of the producer to the consumer. You can see the way of using the seams by the producer.
Torres became interested in the relationship between clothing and memory. She wanted to approach fashion from a theoretical, artistic and investigative point of view.
She did research to make more transience, temporary clothing.

Screen Shot 2014-12-10 at 20.39.35

For example her Effacing Series, a project she did before she started with an invisible wardrobe. With this new project Torres made a wardrobe collection, from a material that dissolves in water. So the clothes could only be worn one time. There is nothing ‘touchable’ left from what was made, only the photos and the videos.

The dissolving part was the part that took my attention. For me it was intriguing to see how people became half naked when they came in contact with water. Fragile. The naked truth.

And when I read more and more about what her meanings were behind the material, it became more interesting. First I wanted to do similar research on dissolving material and maybe even find dissolving ways to connect them (for example a dissolving threat). But when I figured it took Torres years of material research, I thought maybe not. Nowhere she did write or say what she used as a fabric. It dissolves, that’s why it is nowhere to be found, except in Torres’ mind.

When I was reading about the material I also bumped into her concept, unavoidable. In the beginning I was maybe  a little too focused, or intrigued, into the material and I didn’t have a good look on her concept. But after a while it got stuck in my head.

As an explanation to her works, she is talking about the loss of the object and the documentation of this loss. The action of effacing the clothes leaves a trace (the seams) translating a strong relation with memory and forgetfulness.
But how can you memorize an object, or even the loss from it. Do you get attached to it? In this case you do, the clothes are getting very close to your skin and in the end it is not ‘hiding’ your body anymore. Is that what clothing does for me? Does it hide my body, or are they showing my body? I don’t know.
There is a very subtle line between hiding or showing although they are an opposite. In one way you hide what you want to show in private. Do you?
When we put on our clothes in the morning (or any time) we feel our clothes, but after a while, we are not aware anymore that we are wearing clothes. Habituation they call it in behavioral science. How can you remember clothes if you are forgetting that you are wearing them? You do remember the itchy Christmas hand-made sweater from your grandma. Do you remember the itchiness or the sweater, or that you thought it was itchy. In other words: Does your body remember it, the same way that your body remembers how to walk, or does your mind remembers it?

Lara3mood1.2

‘When the fabrics have dissolved, all that remains are the seams and the memories of the clothing.’  Did She write  in the Exhibition book about her work.
Can the seams be seen as a red thread of life? The continuing of life and the route it takes. Because when the water ‘attacks’ the clothes the seams are creating their ‘natural’ way to stay on the body. Is this how the water attacks us, human beings, because we don’t take enough care of the world. Does it have to do anything with the global warming? Our fight against water, which is also one of the main reasons we are alive?
Or can the remaining of the seams be seen as the memory of the edges of pain, or the edges of luck. Are the containing threads only there to give a suggestion of what was before, what happened? We remember only the outline of our memory. A friendship for example, we only remember the fights, the getting back together, but most of the things you did together you forget. Because they were ‘normal’ like having tea a hundred times, you will only remember at most five of the tea parties.
The seams are on the other hand also sticking how they were suppose to be, in other words, the seams are still holding the knots Torres used in designing her wardrobe. They are staying like they are supposed to stay. And then I am coming back to the literal interpretation of the ‘direct lines’ and the ‘transparency’. Because of the visual seams we can see the handwork of Torres. And with that she makes a very clear line between consumer and herself as a producer.

The invisible fashion


Tuesday, November 25, 2014

I am not really into fashion so I didn’t know what to expect during the exhibition and even by looking at the website of The Future of Fashion is Now I had no clue whether I am gonna appreciate this kind of art or not. My fondness for Adele Varcoe started when I visited the exhibition. It was divided into 3 parts and it was the last one which seemed to me totally unclear and thereby intriguing. Ironically it was precisely this part –New Values and New Stories– in which I found this  amazing artist who is taking fashion into a higher level, looking at it not only as an outfit but more as a factor indicating our behavior.

Adele Varcoe is an Australian artist. She is not strictly a fashion designer but her works are directly lined with fashion. She is creating experiences which are suppose to show the social effects on clothing. Adele is mostly constructing group performances in which she brings people together in order to explore the elusive nature of fashion. She wants to outline the sense of self which is heightened through the clothes.

Imagine Chanel

While making her performances she likes to mix the participants, working with artists, models but whats mostly important with the public. She is interested in revealing how fashion influences the interactions and relations between people. Adele often uses the quote “perception of dress” which in her opinion is the subconscious behavior of the society depending on what we wear and in what situation we are.

The performance which I saw in the Boijmans exhibit and which invited me to learn more about Adele Varcoe was the salon fashion show Imagine Chanel. It was in 2012 when she came up with the idea of presenting fashion experience through language. She used the descriptions of garments from 1920s till 1960s Chanel archive at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Powerhouse Museum as material to reveal the role which our imagination plays in looking at fashion. The main goal of this performance was to highlight that fashion is not something that exists as dress only. The fashion show is led by a woman reading the descriptions of Chanel outfits while nude women circle between the audience acting as they were wearing all the precious, described cloths. This situation gives the audience a broad field where by using their imagination they can design their own clothes worn by the models.

03-Adele-Varcoe

Adele’s concept is based on the professional opinion of a sociologist Yaniya Kawamura [x] who claims that : “Fashion does provide extra added values to clothing, but the additional elements exist only in peoples imagination and beliefs. Fashion is not visual clothing but is the invisible elements included in clothing”.

Here comes the link between her work and the name of the third section of the exhibition: New Values and New Stories. I am really fascinated by her way of thinking. It looks like if she is taking a broad working space which is fashion and approaching it from a totally unconventional side. I think the point of conceptual art is to influence the audience and show them something which is not obvious. Working with subconscious behavior and reactions upon “invisible fashion”, Varcoe is putting new values to clothing which is actually our second skin changing our behavior and social interactions.

Each of her works is often closely connected to the broad area of fashion sociology. It is claimed that in fact, fashion is not about clothing but more about the basic process that propels modern life, and it is the outfit which structures the psycho-social development of a modern person.

A similar  concept was to be seen in Varcoe’s other exhibit in the Boijmans Museum called ” Feeling of undress”. This movie was even less about fashion itself but more about the social behaviour and human interactions.

Some other sociologist like Georg Simmel states; ..” that fashion refers to a general phenomenon, in which it becomes a type of social horizon point where the individual interest and taste comes across the collective”. He once wrote “Fashion represents nothing more than one of the many forms of life by the aid of which we seek to combine . . . the tendency toward social equality with the desire for individual differentiation and change”.

I think after experiencing her art or being part of it, we start to realize some behaviors and actions which are natural for us but we can never see them consciously. Varcole gives us an opportunity to set aside our subconscious actions and observe how the natural behavior is chaining depending on what situation we are in.

I think the most interesting part of being an artist is to use your creativity and open minded thinking to show the audience something new, in this case something totally normal but not realized in everyday live. I think its also interesting how she links the scientific knowledge in the area of sociology to play with the human mind and gives people the opportunity to experience and then realize the way of human behaviors by taking part in her art performances.

Maxell 90 Gold


Thursday, March 4, 2010

For me sound is something mysterious, because I’m deaf. during my childhood I was fascinated by music cassettes (casette-bandjes). People love these things. For me it was hard to imagine.
Something coming out of the cassette that I couldn’t see.
some more interesting elements:
– gold/black – variety volume of lines – symmetrical holes – two hole with teeth – rectangle with round corners – easy to put in pocket – parallel lines–

scale drawing “make invisible visible”

final presentation

Exploring the possibilities for translating the idea into a product brought me to a new space for viewing the designwork. I fell in love with the PET-foamboard material and thin woods. I could change the shape and lines (movement).
During the translating I solved the technical problems/errors that I couldn’t see in my scale drawing. I had to wear the showmodel glasses in order to solve these problems and find the right shape (nose-holding, hinge and degree angles).
I’m happy with my first design product translation from the (inaudible) cassette-band and I don’t mind wearing it.


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