11. Implications and applications¶
During this week we explored our ideas for the project that we will commence workling on after the Christmas break. I feel the need for more time and headspace, but think I succeeded to find a clear direction and intention, which I will further explore and research during the coming time. For now, it seems as if the final project may be a performance
This is a photograph of a (tiny) part of my bookshelf. The robot isn’t sitting their coincidentally. The title of Nietzsche’s book translates as The transvaluation of all values and I think this is exactly what we need to do. Since things have changed fundamentally during this century, we also need radically different perspectives to be able to reflect upon what is going on.
BRAINSTORM
¶
I’m interested in investigating whether and how technology, worn directly on the body, may change the experience of wearing clothes fundamentally and perhaps in such a manner that we need far less clothing to better the terrible social and environmental exploitation we must associate with fashion as a system today. I have come to the conclusion that fashion is an ego-business and that fashion brands encourage us to shop for subjectivity, and do so often. They succeed at doing so because they reinforce the idea that we need to play with our identities, find out who we are and experiment with this through changing styles and/or outfits. This caused the current system to come into being, in which we are encouraged to stop reflecting, thinking and criticising and enjoy our quick fix.
Rather than thinking about representing an identity through clothing, I am convinced that we need to think about the affective qualities of clothing more. Or perhaps better: become aware of what we feel when wearing clothes. And then I don’t mean feeling good because wearing an expensive item of clothing, but physically feeling the material touch the skin, the fit, the way in which it envelopes oneself, which connections it makes with the body and the surroundings. If you take this in mind and then think about clothing that changes temperature, pressure or shape. That vibrates, makes sounds or smells. That can communicate with other ‘bodies’ and with yours. I think exploring the countless potential that uncovers here, whilst taking the need for a fundamentally and radically different experience of fashion into account that does away with exploitation whatsoever, may just be an opportunity to also radically and fundamentally change what fashion can be.
How? Through the body. Not so much the material body, but an extended, thinking body. Through embodied knowledge, haptic sensations and intimate, yet connected experiences that are situated, shared and sensible. Through sensitive and original aesthetics that start from a material perspectives and creations that have become, rather than designs that come into being through planning and reasoning.
Presentation
¶
I think we do not know our bodies at all. We have a culturally constructed conception of it as being separated from the mind and ending at the skin. This is a medical conception that focuses upon the material body, rather than an extended one. Our bodies are sensors that are way more complex than the ones we have created. They are actuators that have limitless potential for we don’t even know what a body can do (Deleuze after Spinoza). And there’s embodied knowledge, which is a principle knowledge. Moreover, there’s art and as Nietzsche tells us good art has become, not invented. The photos below together make up the presentation I shared this week.
During the time I was creating and experimenting with art, I was always interested in working with the body, which we will see below.
I was forced to slowly but steadily stop my artistic practices when I started to study philosophy. I, nevertheless, reflected and learnt a lot about bodies. On the left we see a drawing by René Descartes who caused us to regard the body as separated from the mind. I, amongst other philosophers, think he was mistaken.
Descartes initiated a thinking about the body as material, male and medical and bound by the skin.
We can,however, conceptualise bodies in a completely different manner, which will also change our understanding of it.
One could, for instance, think of the body as a very complicated and never fully known sensor and actuator at the same time. One that can sense things we normally don't think about because we lack the mental concepts and vocabulary to do so.
We learn through the body (which is one with the mind).
I'm interested in the area where art, philosophy and science come together and make us perceive things differently.
I, therefore, returned to the art I created over 20 years ago and thought: 'Why did I stop doing this?'
Even Issey Miyaki agreed my work was inspiring and went on to work with my ideas ;)
And Ernesto Neto's work echoes my work and ideas.
I would love to experience being enveloped by this work because I think it will be unlike everything else we have experienced. Unimaginable since you have to feel this.
The works of Lucy McGrae and Bart Hess inspire me, yet I think my work needs to be more about insides connecting to outsides, bodies connecting to each other, and changed perceptions.
This time I won't stop philosophizing and have several sources I can't wait to dive into.
I started small, just drawing a body that's neither male or female.
I started using clay to model a scaled body.
And I returned to my own work once again. I like the contrast this has with the often hard, loud or unaesthetic aspects of some of the projects we did and wonder whether I can pick up things from here. My further steps will be in experimenting with real bodies, materials, connections between insides and outsides, and focusing upon creating different concepts of the body and perception.
Feedback¶
The main feedback I received was how I am going to use what I learnt at Fabricademy in this project. Looking at the brain map, I was interested in haptic sensations from the start onwards. And I do think a performance involving vibration motors may still be a nice idea. I will have to reach out to my enginering and artist friend Marije Meerman and ask for her help whilst researching soft, natural, feminine materials in connection with bodies.