Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion and Style

A Brief Glossary of the Most Abused Terms, Expressions and Concepts in Fashion (Part II)

As promised in yesterday's post,here's the second part of the Fashion Glossary. 

Fashion Education: No fashion designer used to go to college in the past and the best way to become a tailor was starting from the lower step of the tailoring pyramid: picking the pins from the floor of the master tailor's workshop. Now it's all about avant-garde fashion colleges quite sadly producing graduates that may or may not find a job in a saturated market. Condé Nast even founded a college of Fashion and Design in London. Promised to do for people who want to get into the fashion industry what Hogwarts did for Harry Potter, the college looks like an aseptic environment in which students are taught topics that are not explained in the prospectus or on the college site. What do they teach there? Who knows. But a good testimonial for it would have been Darth Vader, obviously accompanied by the slogan "join the Dark Side".

Fashion Show Notes: See Catwalk/Collection Press Release in yesterday's post.

Fêtes/Fêted: Ordinary beings celebrate something or someone. Celebrities, models, fashion designers do not celebrate, they "fête". A term  mostly abused by WWD to indicate a certain degree of pretentious endorsement from that specific celebrity to that specific party. Example: "Pucci Fetes Coffee Table Book". Enter "wwd + fetes" in google and you will get over 90,000 results. Cringing.

I want to be a fashion designer: A sentence usually pronounced by your 3 year old cousin during her birthday party after receiving a new Barbie doll with hundreds of new little dresses. Now quite often pronounced by pop stars, celebrities and assorted icons of style, most of them thinking like Dita Von Teese that you just need to visit a vintage store and copy some successful garments from the past to be a fashion designer. In some cases this statement culminates in "I want to design furniture and offer my customers a 360° degree lifestyle". Considering that it was extremely difficult even for well-established and well organised fashion houses to design successful interior design objects, these statements are usually the proof that the society we are living in is full of deluded narcissists.

Luxurious Uselessness: Not a word, but a concept or rather an innovative idea. An innovatively demented idea because designers, marketing officers and PRs think that in fashion consumption, demented ideas are extremely successful. Example: after Alexander Wang's $150 croc embossed rubber yoga mat with lamb leather strap, in March Havaianas announced it was "teaming up" with luxury French label Pinel & Pinel on a limited edition flip-flop (40 pairs) featuring a rubber sole with a hand-dyed and hand-picked crocodile skin strap. Retail price: £450. Yes, we all need at least one pair. Now we know it is exactly what we will be wearing come armageddon.

(Uselessly Grand and) Magniloquent Language: The fashion industry deals with something very superficial, clothes and accessories and not with open heart surgery. Yet press releases (see also Catwalk/Collection Press Release in yesterday's post) are peppered with a grand and magniloquent language, copious amounts of exclamation marks and other useless words. A pastiche of melodrama and a combination of terms derived from different semantic fields, ravaged, raped and remixed by an ignorant PR officer who read two books in his life (and one was an Ikea catalogue), this sort of language can cause massive cringing fits. Example (from a recent Diesel press release): "Hell yes! Diesel ignites yet another firestorm by appointing Nicola Formichetti to be the new commander-in-chief of the brave army that will spread Diesel's marching orders far and wide." I'm tempted to start a petition to find the culprit.   

Must-Have: Indicates something that you don't really need but that women's magazines aggressively manage to convince you desperately want, reminding you that a particular celebrity owns it. Since consumers have started switching on their brains more often, sales of specific must-have items like Alexa Chung's Mulberry bag went down, causing profits to plummet. Must have? Say, no, thanks.  

New Book Out: Mainly in the sentence "I have a new book out". Abused by fashion designers, models and high profile bloggers, it usually refers to a volume with more pictures than texts about how to dress - pardon - "how to style yourself" (because we all know how to dress, but we don't know how to style ourselves, see the difference?). The dilemma: what would have happened if each picture taken by The Sartorialist would have portrayed a celebrity rather than an ordinary person with no personality rights attached and would have therefore been a very expensive book to publish? Would Penguin have invested on such a book. The doubt remains, but for the time being your vanity may have made this man rich.

New Line/Spin Off Brands: Another day, another launch of another line/spin off brand. This bulimic mania (you can have a new eco-conscious line, a new line designed by a model, a celebrity, etc - it's potentially endless!) may destroy many high street retailers and some fashion brands. Yet the key is not produing more, but producing fewer garments in sizes that truly fit. Or have I just launched a new line? The Fitted?

Oh...!: A title of a piece, a blog post, a feature of dubious journalistic value, usually followed by the name of the protagonist of that story. Very much abused by English native speakers writing about a designer from another country or with an exotic name to prove their language skills. Denotes lack of originality, frustration and high degrees of naivety. Examples: "Oh Dolce!" (for Dolce and Gabbana), "Oh Gianni!" (Gianni Versace), "Oh Giorgio!" (Giorgio Armani). Oh shit, how much I hate it.   

Patron: A sponsor, a benefactor, one that supports, protects, or champions someone or something, such as an institution, event, or cause, now a term indicating two roles, that of pimp (ever met a young designer and his/her "patron" at a hotel reception?) or a socially/politically useless role. Example: Sophie, Countess of Wessex has been announced as the first ever patron of the London College of Fashion. Did the students really need the countess as their patron? No. 

Partnering/Teaming Up: A collaboration between two brands quite often implying a certain degree of prostitution. See also "collaboration" in yesterday's post.

Pop up: An antidote to the crisis and a fun idea up until 6 or 7 years ago when it consisted in seriously endangering your life to try and find a pop up shop. Probably half of the people who intentionally set to visit Comme des Garçons' Guerrilla Store in Glasgow are still missing. Now pop up shops mushroom even inside large boutiques or in prime locations (Armani's pop-up restaurant opened yesterday on Cannes's Croisette), so there's no risk of aimlessly wandering or going missing while looking for them. Yet that was the entire point of the pop up place, going off the beaten track (and getting lost) to find a true gem.

Signature style: Previously applied to historical fashion labels or designers as in "Chanel's signature style" to indicate her tweed jackets or multiple pearl necklaces. Now often applied to young graduates by PR officers. The problem is that it is only with hindsight that you can say if somebody has truly developed a signature style. When a student develops a signature style in his/her graduate collection that student may be a one hit wonder.

You look amazing: Ordinary people extend their hand and say "Hello/Nice to meet you" when meeting somebody they do not know. An ordinary person will answer to this warmth gesture by smiling back and doing the same. A person working in the fashion business quite often acknowledges you with the sentence "You look amazing", pronounced in an envious tone of disgruntled hate. Yes, humanity is a rare thing in fashion.   

Stylist: Who could ever think that this job that enraged your parents and almost prompted them to kill you when you were fifteeen (You: I want to be a stylist; Your Parents: Go and find yourself a proper job!) could become a credible career for some of us? In some cases being a stylist is an underpaid job; in others (Anna Dello Russo) it's a disgustingly overpaid job. Ah, the mysteries of fashion.

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A Brief Glossary of the Most Abused Terms, Expressions and Concepts in Fashion (Part I)

A Brief Glossary of the Most Abused Terms, Expressions and Concepts in Fashion (Part I)

Art is a pretentious business and those of us who had the pleasure of going to certain press previews and receiving a release trying to explain the main themes behind a particular exhibition perfectly know that at times the description didn't make any sense, but just featured a jumble of complicated words forming sentences without any proper meaning (a good idea if you're bilingual is trying to translate certain documents into another language...ah, the fun!)

The same can be said about fashion: I quite often deleted from my email box or tore to bits the press releases of certain fashion shows, but I can assure you that collecting these rare pieces of nonsense can give much more pleasure and provide endless hours of fun on a boring day.

Prompted by this passion for nonsense that the fashion industry has been displaying for quite a few years now, I decided to work on a glossary of the most abused terms and concepts in fashion (and one day I will put together a list of bits and pieces selected from the most hilarious press releases...). What follows is just an extract. Enjoy.
 
Archive: This magic term indicated up until a few years ago the Sancta Sanctorum of a fashion house or a particular museum. A prestigious archive was usually preserved in a dungeon-like location, dedicated space or even a bank vault and accessing it was a long and laborious process in which you were usually accompanied by an archivist who made sure you were wearing white gloves and who was authorised to shoot you if you ever sneezed on a precious piece or tried to take pictures and notes. In modern language an archive can even consist of a pile of dusty cardboard boxes stacked in the corner or a PR office. Besides, in our times creative directors are authorised to visit the archives of the fashion house they work for and pilfer - pardon - take inspiration from the drawings, illustrations, pictures and garments they find there.   

Building a sustainable future: Exploiting Africa. Having exploited most of Asia, the fashion industry is currently diverting its deadly gaze somewhere else.

Capsule Collection: Incoherent selection of 6 garments or accessories by a specific fashion designer for a high street retailer or a brand. It is usually driven by the unquenchable desire of generating money and pollution, masked as a fun "collaboration" (see also collaboration).

Catwalk/Collection Press Release: Don't touch it, don't try to decipher it, you have just come across the Da Vinci Code of fashion, in a nutshell, a pile of utter nonsense. Don't even try to read it because your surprised face will automatically mean that the PR officer in charge will smell your fear and confusion and take advantage of the situation. In doubt, call a linguist who will explain you that casually assembled sentences/descriptions like "The designer delved into the dark recesses of his childhood investigating the inaccessible fragmented shards of memory and of an oppressively obscure Catholic education, traversed by the metaphisical notions of philosophy. The result is a collection conceived as a multi-sensory experience" do not mean anything at all.

Collaboration: Once upon a time in a galaxy far away collaborating meant working with somebody else onto the same project or developing something together. This word has now mutated becoming a genetically modified octopus with multiple meanings at different levels: it can hint at a fashion house doing a product/a collection for a specific high street brand; a celebrity endorsing a product; a high profile blogger doing some kind of projects such as illustrations, photo shoots, styling and so on for a brand, and the list of collaborations goes on and on. In most cases it is an umbrella term that may mean "anything you do with or for a specific client" and it usually involves the client paying you. Sounds like prostitution you say? Then you got it, it can be a form of legalised glamorous prostitution with no sex involved. Most collaborations are actually endorsements: if you're collaborating with a brand to organise an exhibition, the PR officer of the brand may have already chosen what they want you to exhibit, and you will just to have to nod and say yes. Then you have "collaborated" together.    
 
Costume Designer: A serious profession before a wide range of designers and labels infiltrated cinema, theatre, opera and ballet and turned these fields into a product placement game. Luchino Visconti used to joke about using Louis Vuitton trunks in his films because they carried his initials, but Louis Vuitton never designed the cases appearing in his films. Do you really want to be a costume designer? Then be ready to compete with Prada, Givenchy, Valentino, Rodarte, Altuzarra, Stella McCartney, Gaultier, and many more. Cheer up, though: most of them don't have the sensibility to do your job and think that designing a tutu consists in piling up a lot of tulle layers one after the other. Repeat the mantra: Prada is not Danilo Donati; Prada is not Piero Tosi.

Curator/To Curate: Definitely the most abused term in the creative arts world. A curator used to be a highly educated person who took care of cataloguing a collection or who put together an exhibition. Now everybody can be a curator and everybody can curate everything, from an exhibition to a window shop, from a film festival to a magazine, a photo shoot or an advertising campaign. One of the most popular fun T-shirts seen at assorted art events all over the world just spells "CURATOR" and I'm sure that, if Ikea did toilet signs with the words "Curated by..." and some space left to add the name you want, they would sell millions. A very obnoxious example of how this word has been abused: the press releases to some fashion shows include the section "Music curated by" and quite often the musical selection ends up being a pile of vile tracks (Burberry shows anybody?).

Customisation: A word with the potential of killing the fashion industry and the mass marketed economy used by big brands to convince consumers they can be the "curators" (see curator) of their own wardrobes. With this aim in mind they offer customisation services on expensive branded items. Remember that you are already the "curator" of our own wardrobe and that you don't need a powerful brand to brainwash you. 

Democratising fashion: The vague impression that many young people have (reinforced by a bunch of lying fashion editors à la Franca Sozzani) that fashion has bene democratised since they can buy at an affordable price a piece produced by a high street brand but pilfered from the collection of an expensive fashion house. Now, there would be a genuine democratisation when everybody could afford high quality garments produced respecting certain labour and manufacturing standards, rules and regulations. There is nothing democratic in producing cheap garments in sweatshops and making them pass as a collaboration between a famous fashion house and a high street retailer. There is nothing democratic when only a fraction of the society can afford certain items, while all the others can only buy cheap copies.
 
Heritage: Usually employed in conjunction with historical (at least 50 years old) fashion houses and institutions, now often used together with the term "archive" to define the "signature style" of extremely young brands (including Victoria Beckham, ah, the hilarity...).

Icon of style: In the past an actor or actress, but also artists who effortlessly represented style even when/if dressed in rags. Think about Marcello Mastroianni or Audrey Hepburn and you get an idea. In most cases these icons were also gifted with other talents (actors and actresses could actually act!), now this definition can be applied to pompous bastards (Karl Lagerfeld), obnoxious dead politicians (Margaret Thatcher), useless celebrities (Kim Kardashian) and assorted actors/actresses/models etc. In most cases, the title "icon of style" refers to the fact that the icon in question just dresses well or as a good stylist. Quite often modern icons of style do not relate well to other fellow human beings and display aggressively non-iconic behaviour towards those who do not admire them or who do not fit their own canons of beauty (see for example Lagerfeld's comments on people he may not like à la Adele).   

Empowering: Usually followed by the words "women", "silhouettes" and "collection", but the next step is "empowering imagination", at least according to former PPR, from mid-June this year Kering. Imagination is something naturally empowering, right because it's called "imagination", if you need to empower it, you must be really desperate.

Ethical: Guilt-free label often used by high street retailers. Fashion is not ethical, in fact there is nothing ethical in fashion and when this word is used, it usually implies that something is highly immoral. H&M's "ethical" evening wear range "Conscious Exclusive" automatically implies all their other lines are, well, simply unethical.

Eco-conscious/eco-friendly: Another guilt-free label overemployed in fashion. If fashion were eco-conscious or eco-friendly we wouldn't be depending on fast trends and companies producing more items than they can sell. Wouldn't producing fewer T-shirts with vapid slogans about saving our planet (or not producing them at all) be less damaging to our planet than actually proving with a toxic T-shirt that you love trees? 

See you tomorrow for the second part of "A Brief Glossary of the Most Abused Terms, Expressions and Concepts in Fashion".

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Charles Correa: India's Greatest Architect @ London's RIBA

Charles Correa is internationally considered as a major figure in contemporary architecture. An exhibition at London's RIBA entitled "Charles Correa: India's Greatest Architect" is currently celebrating his work and his role in the creation of an architecture for post-Independence India.

Born in 1930 in Hyderabad, Correa studied archtecture at the University of Michigan and at MIT, returning to Bombay in 1956 to set up his own practice. He soon started focusing on projects that could improve the life of many people rather than just the life of a few private and wealthy clients, and began planning and designing new towns across India such as New Bombay, for which he became the chief architect.

Many of his projects, including the Kanchanjunga Apartments tower in New Bombay (1983) with its verandas and double-height terraces, were based on the architectural solutions dictated by climate and necessity that he learnt from rural builders and slum dwellers' shacks.

The architect, planner, activist and theoretician worked throughout his career on a wide range of buildings that include the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial at the Sabarmati Ashram, the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur and the Madhya Pradesh State Parliament Building in Bhopal (a successor of Louis Kahn's Dhaka National Assembly), plus townships and affordable public housing projects in Delhi, Bombay, Ahmenadabad, Bangalore and other cities in India, all of them grounded in Indian culture, spiritual and symbolic themes.

The Parliament Building features for example a circular lower chamber sitting under a dome inspired by a stupa, the Buddhist symbol of enlightenment, while the Jawahar Kala Kendra art centre references the old city of Jaipur and is based on a nine-square mandala that corresponds to the Navagraha (mandala of the nine planets).

Correa's philosophy is rooted in the rich traditions of India and is also informed by an intimate understanding of place. In his essay "Blessings of the Sky", Correa looks at the Indian relationship to space and sky. As he highlights in the text, "in India, the sky has profoundly affected our relationship to builtform, and to open space. For in a warm climate, the best place to be in the late evenings and in the early mornings is outdoors, under the open sky. Such spaces have an infinite number of variations: one steps out of a room...into a verandah...and thence on to a terrace...from which one proceeds to an open courtyard, perhaps shaded by a tree...or a large pergola overhead. At each moment, subtle changes in the quality of light and ambient air generate feelings within us – feelings which are central to our beings."

Correa's statement is vitally important to understand his aesthetics that rely on the relationship of humanity to the environment and his pioneering work on urbanism issues and low-cost shelters in the Third World, a key topic of discussion especially if we think about the natural disasters that every year affect different areas and countries all over the world (and this should maybe prompt us to refocus a bit on Correa's low-cost shelters, Buckmister Fuller's high performance shelters or Jean Prouvé's prefabricated structures and mix them maybe with more advanced techniques like self-assembling materials).

Curated by Dr Irena Murray, RIBA Sir Bannister Fletcher Curator and designed by internationally renowned architect David Adjaye, "Charles Correa: India's Greatest Architect" features many highlights from the architect's archive (Correa donated thousands of his sketches to RIBA) including signature projects, images, drawings, photographs, models and films, charting a career spanning over five decades.

Charles Correa: India's Greatest Architect, RIBA, London, until 4th September 2013. The event is accompanied by a series of talks and debates, you can check the complete programme here.

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Pure Sine-Waves and Parametric Patterns: Zaha Hadid's King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) Metro Station, Riyadh

The ArRiyadh Development Authority recently announced that Zaha Hadid Architects will build the new King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) Metro Station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The 20,434 sq. m. King Abdullah Financial Disctrict Metro Station - to be completed in four years - will contribute to serve the fast-growing population of the city, that now boasts 5 million residents, while serving as interchange on the network for Line 1, as well as the terminus of Line 4 (for passengers to the airport) and Line 6 of the new Riyadh Metro.

The new building will be characterised by a lattice-like patterning on the façade (that will reduce solar gain) defined by a sequence of opposing and dynamic sine-waves that act as the spine for the building’s circulation. The sine-waves embedded in the building were inspired by the sand dunes sculpted by desert winds.

Sine-waves or sinusoids, that is mathematical curves that are usually employed to describe a smooth repetitive oscillation, occur in pure and applied mathematics, as well as physics, engineering, signal processing and many other fields.

The architectural studio, whose Riverside Museum in Glasgow has just won the European Museum of the Year Award, moved from sand dunes since they represent complex natural formations generated by frequencies and repetition, and based its research for this futuristic shape also on symmetry and scaling and on concepts borrowed from harmonics, including amplitude and initial phase.

The most interesting point in this sort of contemporary architectural structures is that they seem to offer us a physical representation of mathematical ideas without sacrificing design ambitions: in 1807 Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier established a fundamental theorem which is used in linear systems analysis. Its core idea stated that any waveform can be synthesized by combining a specific set of pure sine-waves in appropriate phase relationships.

A pure sine-wave in the temporal domain extends forever, with no beginning and no end; a pure sine-wave in the spatial domain extends indefinitely in space. In a way this structure will look like a complex Fourier series smoothly simplified (to eliminate sharp corners), characterised and optimised by a parametric variable.

All renders courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

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The Art of Textiles or Textiles as Art: Strings @ Design Flanders

The interest surrounding textile art has grown in the last ten years or so also thanks to dedicated exhibitions that allowed many of us to discover the intrinsic pleasures of creating refined art combining traditional skills and materials with a modern point of view.

If you like this form of art you shouldn't miss "Strings" at Brussel's Design Flanders Gallery. A project by Design Flanders in collaboration with the non-profit organisation Lace as an Art, the event is directly linked to the International Betonac Competition.

The latter was launched by Betty Cuykx, founder of Lace as an Art, as an opportunity to assess and promote the state of Flemish textile art, but, little by little, the event became well-known far beyond the borders of Belgium.

Numerous artists from across the planet participated indeed in the event and every edition involved workshops and a travelling exhibition which visited many countries.

"Strings" will feature recent works by the Betonac competition "laureates" together with a group of designers from Flanders (Tim Baute, Patricia Boulez, Betty Cuykx, Trui Demarcke, Hoet Design, An Lanckman, Ria Lins, Marleen Mertens, Hilde Metz, Nathalie Perneel, Rozemarijn Spilliaert, Lieve Vandycke & Inge Van Gheel).

The laureates' creations are particularly exciting and include Marie-Rose Lortet's solid lace architectural structures; Michaël Brannand Wood's eye-catching sculptural pieces; Marian Bijlenga's impalpable embroideries; Kaori Umeda's works calling to mind natural and organic forms; Luciana Costa Gianello's thought-provoking installations; Blanka Sperkova's wire structures suspended between the traditional wire craft of Slovak tinkers and Bruno Munari's experimental objects such as "Concavo-Convesso" (1946-47) and Erna Van Sambeek's unusual pieces made with ordinary objects such as ceramic dishes transfigured through embroidery, lace, pearls and pins and elevated to art.

All the artists featured use the most disparate materials and techniques, focusing on exploring the expressive possibilities offered by threads, through small or larger works.

The artists' approach is varied as some works are based on structural and geometrical concepts or mathematical variables; others look at density, expansion, dimensionality and monumentality.

Some pieces represent abstract forms and shapes or impressive figurative images; others are more decorative but still prompt visitors to ponder about the tactile power of different materials, the importance of manual labour and the powers of objects that actively interact with what surrounds them.

All the creations can be analysed on multiple levels, from different points of view or disciplines (including art, architecture, interior design or fashion, but also technology) and all of them represent the extraordinary and optimistic energy of the artists' gestures.

The most important point remains the fact that each piece represents the journey without an end that threads embark in, accompanying visitors through a sensorial experience involving all one's senses. "Strings" will be the last event organised by the non-profit organisation Lace as an Art.

Strings, Design Vlaanderen (Design Flanders Gallery), Koloniënstraat 56 - 7e verdieping, 1000 Brussel, Belgium, 7th June 2013 - 18th August 2013.

All images courtesy of Design Flanders.

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Be Brave: Franca Pisani's The Courage of Inspiration @ Halle am Wasser 3 - Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

Critics often underline how Joseph Beuys' works have a documentary aspect about them hidden in the materials and colours the artist used, in those thick grey felts or in his muted browns. The old objects assembled and employed in his artworks ended up having a memory-enhancing value, prompting viewers to try and make sense of what they saw, decoding it through their lives and experiences. Franca Pisani's work is gifted with the same "documentary" value.

Part of a generation of artists unafraid of breaking the boundaries and following their own paths, Florence-based Pisani has worked throughout the years using different media, such as painting, sculpture, installations, visual poetry and mail art.

A new exhibition entitled "The Courage of Inspiration" will open at the end of the month at Hamburger Bahnhof's Halle am Wasser 3 in Berlin. The event - based around a series of themes such as plurality, multiculturalism, nature and feminine identity - features new works by Pisani, conceived a bit like Beuys's thinking and spoken forms, set to provoke thoghts and make us ponder about how we mould and shape the world we live in.

"The Courage of Inspiration" includes indeed a series of large canvases covered in primitive symbols and graffiti, images trapped in Plexiglass, and a series of grey busts with visually striking details in vivid red. The former invite visitors to go back to their origins, rediscovering them and contemplating the genetic code of humanity, while the latter hint at a more optimistic future, characterised by new energies and by the revitalised power of imagination.

What's the background to this exhibition?
Franca Pisani: I had the honour of being invited by one of the seminal state galleries dedicated to modern art in Germany, the Halle am Wasser at Hamburger Banhohf. They own a very important Modern Art collection that also includes key installations and works by Joseph Beuys and the idea for "The Courage of Inspiration" came from this fascinating figure. When I was an art student I read a lot about him and contemplated the highly imaginative universe created by this well-rounded artist and shaman. This man who could have been my father served as a pilot in the Second World War, was shot down over the Crimea and saved by a group of indigenous people who covered him in animal fat and felt that preserved his body, making him discover that nature saves. This strong link with nature in his life has showed me the way I'm currently following in my work. I sort of entered the simple yet complex magic of nature since exhibiting at the 54th Venice Art Biennale, as part of the Italian Pavillion with my installation "La leggerezza di essere in due" (The Lightness of Being in Two) composed of two figures, one standing, one sitting in a wheelchair, with their heads wrapped in reeds from the natural reserve of the splendid Orbetello lagoon, managed by the Italian branch of the WWF. The reserve is a safe haven but it also represents a sort of new way of thinking and culture in which humans are aware of their limits and limitations.

Can you take us through a virtual tour of the exhibition?
Franca Pisani: The exhibition in Berlin will reunite 110 destructured canvases created throughout a year. They represent a series of mind thoughts and mental notes, one overlapping the other like branches of a baobab tree, and also mix past and present while they hang in a large wall installation. The genetic code of this installation is represented by a series of bi-faceted characters locked in plexiglass boxes that hint at dichotomies such as public and private, while affirming their existence together with nine sculptures, all of them busts in terracotta, representing female identity, memory, fragility, and intellectual and spiritual power. The research behind this exhibition revolves around a series of themes including ecological conscience, multiculturalism and new and old languages. Paintings, sculptures and installations represent the courage of inspiration because the freedom of thought and of using one's imagination help us conquering once again a reality that is not pre-arranged by others.

In which way do the plexiglass and the terracotta pieces interact with the larger installation?
Franca Pisani: The paintings, sculptures and installations analyse a political system that has evolved into an art system. The nine terracotta busts featured in the exhibition are elevated to imaginary characters. Some of them have half-closed eyes not because they are afraid of looking around them, but because they have an eye looking inward to see and grasp the best parts of themselves, but also the mystery hiding inside them. Terracotta is a sort of forgotten material and represents a difficult balance between man and nature. While moulding this material an artist must indeed take care of various issues including gravity, or the shrinking process that takes place during firing. Life is injected into the thirteen plexiglass pieces via the double faceted shroud on which I traced primitive marks and symbols. All the artifacts meet and clash with the main installation.

In this exhibition you return to art intended as artifact, can you tell us more about this concept?
Franca Pisani: My return to art intended as artifact is a way to reject any ideology and the constrictive art market as well, while rediscovering the pleasure of physical acts such as touching materials and colours. Art galleries have lost their aura, they aren't shrines anymore, but outside art galleries society has changed, and there is a world full of colours and energy.

So far you mainly employed natural materials in your work, but in this exhibition you also used plexiglass which is a synthetic material, how do you reconcile it with your passion for nature?
Franca Pisani: Plexiglass represents the technological shock entering into my works and hitting my characters. At the beginning I wasn't sure about what I was doing, but then I realised that the role of the artist is also that of confusing and creating a certain level of shock even when entering in a well-organised environment like a factory producing such materials. In this case the artist represents an element that breaks into the precise and well co-ordinated routines of the workers there, realising that his or her job is trying to annihilate the dullness that too often suffocates human beings.

One of the themes you tackle in your works is feminine identity, what does it represent to you?
Franca Pisani: This is a key theme for me. It was thanks to what I call "female synergy" that my art came out of the clandestine dimension. One day while I was in France for an exhibition, I met one of the most amazing persons I ever encountered in my life, Marzia Spatafora. She wanted to collaborate with a woman artist and we teamed up and grew up together, strong and stubborn though surrounded by male ostracism. I remember that once in Pietrasanta, a famous sculptor complained because he didn't want women to be part of an exhibition. When I think about it, I still feel like screaming. If I am the artist I am today it is also because of Marzia who has been a dear friend in many fights. Women have embedded in their DNA this sense of becoming, growing and understanding, and this is why men are scared and tend to annihilate women's potential by taking advantage of our sense of fagility as well, that should be a resource and not a weakness. Looking for our primitive origins in my works allows me to eliminate certain differences, reach the true essence of humanity and discover that, after all, our ancestors are very near to us when we scratch the surface of the fake reality in which we live and finally realise that women genuinely represent the evolution, the change and the newness in this big and vast world and in the art universe.

Is the title of the exhibition a message to visitors?
Franca Pisani: The title hints at the fact that only by being brave, by keeping your head high and your chin up, you can go through a wild art system that badly needs to renovate itself. We need an injection of courage at different levels: artists must go back to work in their studios; galleries must create culture, welcoming and educating both professionals and amateurs to look at real art and not at ways to make quick money; critics must follow art with a firm and stubborn mind. Magazines must also help rising more interest in art and museum curators must go and visit artists and discover them, while government must turn into the first buyers and supporters of art and artists.

Are there any contemporary artists that you particularly like?
Franca Pisani: I don't think there is one particular artist that I like the most. All contemporary artists excite and move me in different ways. Other people like listening to music or reading a good book, but I feel an almost obsessive need to fill my eyes with art. I love embracing the new and the visually exciting; I never put any constraints on my mind, but I try to open both my mind and my heart to every kind of art. I wish I was also able to visit different artists' studios, but I think that the loneliness of our society has managed to enter even creative environments, making in some cases almost impossible to meet in real life, outside the virtual dimension of Facebook. 

The Courage of Inspiration by Franca Pisani, Halle am Wasser 3 - Hamburger Bahnhof, Invalidenstr. 50/51, 10557 Berlin, Germany, 30th May - 28th June 2013

All images courtesy of Franca Pisani

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Get the Glitch! Nukeme's Glitch Knitwear and Embroidery

We live in a digital landscape and we have therefore grown accustomed to "glitches", or annoying malfunctions and technical errors, appearing in our lives while we browse an Internet page, look at the screens to check when the next train is due or use an automatic teller machine. Quite often, rather than correctly visualising the information we are looking for, we just end up seeing jumbled letters or coloured blocks. Children even have their own "glitch heroine", cute pixellating Disney character Vanellope von Schweetz who appeared in last year's Wreck-It Ralph.

All these examples may prove glitches are destined to remain confined in a digital and therefore impalpable world, but Japanese artist (you can check out the gallery events he organises with some friends here), musician (he's part of an electro-ambient band) and fashion designer Nukeme doesn't think so.

Prompted by his passions that include not just art and fashion, but also data re-writing, and technology, Nukeme developed in the last few months experimental knitwear and embroidery patterns disrupted by glitches purposely induced by him.

In the first case he connected an Arduino platform to a Brother knitwear machine linked to a computer; in the latter he rewrote the binary-code that moves the needle of the embroidery machine. In both cases the programme sent from the computer to the machine goes through a loss of control, creating small but visible disruptions in the final pattern or logo.

Though the final effect is imperfect, the knitted swatches, or clothing items with glitch embrodiery still look aesthetically pleasing, and, above all, quite amusing.

Can you tell us more about your background?
Nukeme: I was born in 1986 in Okayama, Japan, and, after graduating from the fashion school in Osaka, I started living in Tokyo. I studied fashion for three years, focusing on womenswear in the first two years and menswear in the last year. Now I’m working part-time sewing toiles at a fashion brand in Tokyo, while also developing my own creations.

You're an artist, fashion designer and musician, do you have an inspiring person - like a favourite artist or somebody who influences you in your work?
Nukeme: I think Yoshinori Henguchi, ucnv, and Dorita - the member of my band and also the partner of TANUKI - have a large and direct effect on me. In the first place, the collaboration with Henguchi led me to start working on my brand activities: it was him who suggested the name "Nukeme". It was ucnv who taught me the "glitch" techniques and concepts and I often discuss the ideas of creation with Dorita. As for the influence in my fashion designs, I think I received a great influence from BLESS.

 

What inspired the "glitch project"?
Nukeme: The participation in the glitch workshop that was held at Tokyo University of the Arts, lectured by ucnv, Yosuke Hayashi, and Shusaku Hariya. During this two-day workshop, I learnt the history of glitch and basic techniques to glitch images and movies. After participating in the workshop, a friend of mine told me that he was going to sell a computerized sewing and embroidery machine at an affordable price and I bought it jointly with Dorita. I applied the techniques that I learnt at the workshop to the machines and it happened to work out. Though the idea to glitch the embroidery had been just a mere thought, I think it turned out to be a very good way to turn the glitch into an artwork.

Which was the most difficult aspect of this project, hacking the Brother KH-970 knitting machine with the Arduino platform?
Nukeme: Tomofumi Yoshida and So Kanno took charge of the hacking’s technical part, and I was just looking at their trial-and-error process until the hacking made a certain success. Of course there was a long series of failures and I had a really hard time, but it was them who took all the pains tech-wise. My part was thinking what I should knit with this hacked knitting machine and how I should express the glitches in knitwear. So I guess the most difficult aspect of this project is to decide what I should create from now on with this hacked Brother KH-970.

Which offers the best solutions in knitwear, traditional machines, computers or a combination of both?
Nukeme: What I find interesting is the misapplication of things, and things that were created from unexpected use of machines, I have no intention of creating a great knitwear piece. For instance, I think it would be more amusing to turn something that was made to be a basketball net into a great knitwear design.
On your site there are also other installations and a series of caps made in collaboration with poet Yoshinori Hengichi: did you ever think about making textile installations for art museums?
Nukeme: If I have a chance, I'd love to. But since I can't create them all alone, I guess I will have to form a team to work on it.

One of your previous installations showcased at the 16th Japan Media Arts Festival Entertainment was a very long T-shirt with a series of "Glitch Embroidery" logos of various brands. Are you fascinated by commercial logos or do you use them in ironic ways to highlight how much they influence our lives?
Nukeme: It was Dorita who suggested me the idea of using commercial logos. I thought the idea was perfect since I’d been working on Nukeme with the brand concept of "hat as a media" and "fashion as a media". I guess I’m fascinated in something that has an element of advertising rather than in commercial logos. By embroidering a commercial logo on a clothing, the clothing turns out to have a function of an advertisement. The clothing itself is rather trivial, but I feel there is a little bit of fun in the fact that the clothing starts advertising something regardless of the wearer’s will. And since those commercial logos are what everyone sees in their daily life, I’m using them as a common language. To express and tell the action of "glitch", there is a need of understanding "what it used to be before it was glitched".

 

There is a lot of talk at the moment about smart textiles - do you feel that new technologies will help us developing innovative garments in the future?
Nukeme: I think new technologies will multiply design ideas. Now we can casually and easily digital-print on textile, and that's much easier than it was when I was a student. There are even fibres that change their colours according to temperature now, but there aren't garments made with them at the moment. But I expect that even today's latest technologies will turn into something universal in a while. And if there’s a new technology that spreads widely - so widely that people forget that it was a new technology - I think that's an innovation.

Is there a technique you'd like to experiment with in future?
Nukeme: I’ve been using knitting and embroidery machines usually employed for household purposes, but now I want to try using data and machines for industrial use.  I would also like to try knitting full-coloured Jacquard. And for a long time, I’ve been interested in printing and dying not on the cloth but directly on products (clothing) too.

If you could launch a collaboration with a scientist or an artist who would you choose?
Nukeme: There are 2 on-going projects right now, a collaboration with Jeff Donaldson (noteNdo) and another collaboration with ucnv. Both of the collaborations are fun. I’m planning to upload them on my website as soon as they are completed, so I would like to urge your readers to check them out. If there’s a chance, I’d like to collaborate with anyone regardless of their occupation. Even a music session with my band would be great fun to me!

What plans do you have for the future?
Nukeme: I usually create clothing items like art pieces, and I want to keep this style on the one hand, but I also want to try mass-producing my works on the other hand. I would also like to take part in competitions and receive work from private clients too. Right because I accept as many requests as possible, many projects expanded in a very short period of time. I can’t even imagine how things will develop in future, but I hope I will have fun!

All images courtesy of Nukeme

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No Future (Then and Now)

The recently opened exhibition "Punk: Chaos to Couture" at the Met received quite a lot of criticism for having somehow sanitised punk, making it acceptable to the elites and turning its rebellious power into a pile of carefully arranged clothes. So to rediscover a bit of punk spirit, I'm posting today some images shot by photographer Stéphane Duroy.

Born in 1948, Duroy started his career as a press photographer, working for different agencies. As the years passed he moved onto personal projects focused around Europe that often turned into disenchanted documents of the 20th century, recording also the changes Berlin went through from 1989 on.

Fascinated by decadence in England, Duroy chronicled it with a project that lasted for a few years between the late '70s and the early '80s.

The results of this project were a series of images picturing miners and their kids, young punks squatting in derelict houses, unemployed people, social outcasts drinking in the streets and the backstage of a random catwalk show.

Some of the most interesting images were shot around the East End, at the time one of the poorest areas in London (the first picture featured in this post was taken there during a binmen strike), but now painfully hip and trendy.

It would be interesting to maybe rediscover some of these images in a dedicated exhibition that looked at the meaning of the “no future” slogan then and now and that wondered which are the main differences between that generation of young people without any future and young people now. It would also be interesting to see how the fashion industry turned punk slang into empty slogans to maybe print on a shirt, ending up rehabilitating the legacy of some politicians and even elevating some of them (read Margaret Thatcher) to icons of style.

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A Fly's Eye View: Buckminster Fuller at the Toulouse International Art Festival

Richard Buckminster Fuller defined himself as a “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist” whose life was based on search and research projects. Analysing his contributions to the world of art, architecture and science is not that easy even in our times, especially considering how, while some critics consider him a prophet, others quite often dismiss him as a visionary eccentric.

Among some of the most interesting projects Buckminster Fuller worked on, there was also the "Fly's Eye Dome" (1965), a structure designed as a cheap dwelling, that was still under development two years before his death. This double-skin truncated sphere 15 meters in diameter that looks as if it had been lifted from a sci-fi film set was restored two years ago and will soon be arriving in Europe to be exhibited at the Toulouse International Art Festival, opening at the end of the month.

The dome was based on Buckminster Fuller’s mathematical research and on a very simple principle: enclosing the largest volume of interior space using the smallest surface area, a sphere, creating in this way a structure that could offer immediate shelter to people in urgent need.

The Fly's Eye Dome was extremely light since the structure was pierced by several holes: these “eyes” or openings embedded in the dome could be used as windows, doors, vents or solar energy cells. The structure with its pore-looking holes anticipated our current obsession with biomimicry since, while guaranteeing efficiency and flexibility, the openings also hinted at the metabolic regeneration of living organisms.

As Fuller wrote in his book Critical Path (1981) "the Fly’s Eye domes are designed as part of a ‘livingry’ service. The basic hardware components will produce a beautiful, fully equipped air-deliverable house that weighs and costs about as much as a good automobile. Not only will it be highly efficient in its use of energy and materials, it also will be capable of harvesting incoming light and wind energies."

Fuller made three prototypes - a 12, 24 and 50 foot dome - and the one that will be shown in Toulouse is the larger one, exhibited during the 1981 Los Angeles Bicentennial, then disassembled and dumped in a field. All the damaged parts have been restored by collector, curator and architecture historian Robert Rubin. The Fly's Eye Dome will occupy the Port Viguerie area and every night special lighting designed by Philips will illuminate it (sadly the dome won't be accompanied by Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car, an 'omni-directional transport system' intended to fly).

In the Toulouse International Art Festival catalogue, Robert Rubin calls Buckminster Fuller “the American cousin” of French metal worker, self-taught architect and designer Jean Prouvé, drawing comparisons between the two. Fuller's desire to put at the disposal of humanity a high performance shelter reminds indeed of Prouvé's prefabricated structures, from his Maison Tropicale to the Maison des Jours Meilleurs (A house for better days) that could be build in just a few hours.

Yet, while for us it's easy to look at certain projects and structures by Buckminster Fuller and immediately relate to them (considering also new technologies, including 3D printing, applied to design and architecture), the futurist polymath's radical ideas weren't always taken too seriously. After all, as Rubin states in the Art Festival catalogue, "Bucky just came a little early."

Toulouse International Art Festival, Toulouse, France, 24th May-23rd June 2013   

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Book Alert: Fabricated by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman (John Wiley)

The first experiments with 4D printing may have started in more recent months, but in the last few years many of us have been busy familiarising themselves with 3D printing, a technology that has been pervading different fields and professions.

Dedicated projects in art, architecture, interior design or fashion have proved 3D printing can definitely help developing new and experimental shapes, high-performing parts or optimized products. Yet for most of us this technology and the possibilities offered may still be difficult to grasp. Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman come to our rescue in the recently published volume Fabricated (John Wiley).

The book subtitle - The New World of 3D Printing - though generic, perfectly hints at the wider scope and applications that this new technology may have. The volume - divided in 14 chapters - opens with a brief history of 3D printing that dates the first experiments around the mid-'80s. The authors then focus on explaining the different methods, families of printers and materials, while also analysing design software and design optimisation, and the advantages this technology may offer in fields like medicine, medication, food, design and fashion (readers of this site will rediscover in the book Kerrie Luft, Hoon Chung and the Continuum Fashion duo).

The most interesting chapters look at the impact this technology may have on our lives if we ever managed to print human organs or foods with specific dietary requirements, but the financial aspects are also tackled in several parts of the books analysing customisation and personalisation processes and the consequences of 3D printing on the labour market.

Yet Lipson and Kurman do not make the mistake of seeing everything through rose-tinted glasses: while in one chapter their tone may be more optimistic, in another they remind us about legal problems linked to 3D printing, from health and safety standards to issues regarding property law and copyright infringement or even criminal law (think about recent issues about downloadable designs for weapons, or the consequences of managing to use a 3D printer to create a new breed of chemical drugs). 

The authors also tackle the green issue: discarded prototypes littering university laboratories or design studios will turn into a new threat to the environment if we don't start developing more eco-friendly materials like the desert sand employed by Markus Kayser for his "Solar Sintering" design project. So, while 3D printing may be the future, keeping on experimenting is definitely the path forward. 

Some issues the authors look at in the volume - illustrated by a lot of black and white pictures and a few ones in colour, but written in an extremely accessible language and therefore ideal for everyone, from students to teachers (a lengthy chapter analyses the benefits of letting a 3D printer into the classroom) and researchers, but also amateur 3D printing fans - may find a solution soon, others are instead set to generate wider debates on a technological, but also on a moral and ethical level in the next decade. In the meantime, if you want to know more about the magic and the perils of 3D printing, you should definitely pick a copy of Fabricated.   

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