For the rest of the world, life goes on as usual. Women and men, sitting together at round café tables, sipping coffee and chatting about their day. Rumours making rounds, gossip being fabricated and exchanged through quiet whispers. Eyes searching for new faces, new things to remember and tell stories about, stories to share with friends or on social media. For some, it may be a random stranger’s outfit. At least I have noticed that clothes catch my attention. Some garments are more eye-catching than others, some outfits may be more intentionally put together, with a purpose. Point is, clothes tell a story and every piece of clothing has a story. More often than not, it has travelled across the world, been touched by many hands and conversely touched many lives. Every piece is linked to a person’s or many persons’ stories. Someone produced the fabrics that make up textiles. Someone sewed those textiles together. Sometimes, blood, sweat and tears form part of the process. Mostly, people are oblivious to the stories behind their outfits.
Fashionclash 2024 aimed at bringing those stories to light and questioning relations of power. Who gets to decide what is allowed to be talked about in the fashion industry? Who holds the power to make us aware of the ethicalities of everyday fashion choices? And how does fashion become a site of resistance? Interdisciplinary inquiry, the bringing together of concepts and practices from different fields, blurs the boundaries between art and everyday artifact, high and street fashion, and ultimately between artist and audience.
The “Fashion Makes Sense” program at Centre Céramique blurs the boundaries between art and research practices, perhaps questioning the power of scientific discourse - who is allowed to determine whose truths to tell? Most exhibitions take place on the 3rd floor. One single exhibit can be found on the ground floor, where the café is buzzing with visitors. Not many of them seem to be aware of the festival unfolding across Maastricht. At least, when I arrive on the 3rd floor, there are only a few people engaging with the different exhibitions.
“Handmade” captures my attention. TVs are arranged in a circle, cables winding down their high mountings, connecting headphones to the screens. A single stool has been placed in front of each “tower”. Garment workers stare at me from the screens, the articulations of their work experiences within the fashion industry accompanied by subtitles in English. Each TV tower, each worker, addressed a pressing issue of the fashion industry. Additionally, information stands illustrate the stories of garment workers, each addressing an urgent concern.
Technology mediates how I perceive and engage with the stories presented to me. As a master student of Art, Science and Technology Studies, the ubiquity of technology and mutual co-shaping of the fields of art and technoscience are extremely prevalent to me. The snippets chosen to be exhibited frame problems in a certain way and elicit hoped-for emotional responses. In an act of what Randles et al. (2016) call moral globalisation, my consumer habits and their consequences are on the table. The installation has been carefully curated, bringing audiences (presumed fashion consumers) and garment workers together. In the first place, technology facilitates the sharing of images and stories - as if it was spreading rumours of what goes on behind the scenes of fashion production - we are made aware of other people’s struggles and see and hear from them, not directly but close enough. I become uncomfortably aware of where my own clothing is from. While the (lack of) ethics of fashion giants is not new to me, I am at times bewitched by the convenience and financial appeal of fast fashion. I have a look around at other visitors, checking if anyone may be under the same spell as me. As if the people on the screens could tell on me, I am concerned about my clothing being the object of gossip. A feeling of being watched and judged for my consumer habits, reinforced by TV towers surrounding me, is planted like a seed in my mind. I feel exposed as a political consumer: despite the need for greater corporate responsibility for working conditions and sustainability, my personal choices co-craft the stories I see on the screens. Confronted with the ethics of my choices, I am made aware of the power conforming exerts, but also of my own power to resist. The video installations decrease distance, but only instantly - to what extent the campaign really makes an impact remains a concern of the future. It is up to me to tend to the seed so that it grows not into indifference or shame but into deeper awareness and action.
The presentation of garment workers’ stories reminds me of research within the context of my master’s program. Shared experiences are carefully curated to create a narrative of a prevalent problem, just like a researcher would categorise interview snippets into themes and then develop a clear storyline for their final research output. Can the creators behind this work be considered artists or researchers? What does this reconfiguration of roles in knowledge production do to dominant constellations and discourses?
Artistic practices are increasingly being used to also conduct and present research. A growing entanglement of art and research methodologies further deepens the debate on what art is and can do - perhaps even highlighting the question of what art should be and do. In art-based research, social commentary and art become intrinsically linked. However, art-based research has a clear advantage over other research practices: it has the potential - and may I say, imperative - to elicit visceral responses in visitors. FashionClash, as a whole, is activism, aesthetic expression, sensory immersion, and research colloquium all in one. However, I was personally missing a deeper reflection on the use of technology and the research/ creation process. This raises the question whether artistic research should be held to the same standards as traditional research or if it acquires a special position because it is art.
Additionally, Centre Céramique offered several workshops, in which visitors could craft their own artwork. Technology here refers not only to dominant definitions, like phones and TVs, but also to tools and materials. The workshops invite a different kind of reflection: paired with knowledge - and perhaps discomfort - produced through art-based research practices, I am now called into action. In the TEXtiles workshop, I was invited to express my emotions around Europe and the EU through textiles and other materials and thereby make my thoughts and sentiments visible. It invites a reflection on power and disempowerment as experienced in these turbulent times, bridging the immateriality of thought and physicality of the “artwork” taking shape in front of me. Active bodily engagement becomes a site of resistance and an inquiry into my own mind. The former also applies to the clothing repair workshop organised on the 3rd floor. How did we get so far that extending our clothes’ lifespan, an act so simple, becomes a form of activism in our society?
Making sense of fashion and the art/tech/research nexus through an Arts, Science and Technology lens certainly evokes a variety of questions. For me, it draws attention to many subtleties - or perhaps not so subtle but normalised ideas - about fashion, art and activism, the role of technology, and fashion ethics. A deeper engagement with the connection between art, technology and research would have added valuable layers to “Fashion Makes Sense” social mission, especially given its name. But perhaps its strengths lie not necessarily in provoking action but in raising critical questions about our position within networks of power, about our place in this whole fashion thing. And what is left unsaid is a matter of connecting the dots - a collective effort to paint a full picture.
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