PK Langshaw: Through the eye of the needle: clothing is reversible
through the eye of the needle: clothing is reversible
or
urban reversedress
I do not see how the art project and the sociological project can be confronted in opposition. They are linked and inseparable for me. Art can react in many poetic forms: to question, share, sensitize, transform and to co-create an alternative for living.
Lucy Orta, Hou Hanru, Extract from an interview, May 1999
We can clothe ourselves in mystery. With clothes, we can mimic or even invent persona or belie the self. In the pluralistic context of clothing, statements tend to preface questions. How do creators of garments situate themselves within the arts and social sciences when dress is the primary canvas or page for their creative expression? What defines clothing in the disciplines where clothing is produced or where dress is investigated to understand the individual/social mapping of being? How do we, as educators, transmit this crossdisciplinarity of clothing in a coherent and manageable to way to students of design, fashion or textile arts? Clothes teach, speak, and create the self-in-community, yet rarely has there been interdisciplinary integration and even less is there likely to exist a curriculum that is also inclusive of the interpretive sciences. The conference paper underlines the importance of investigating clothing and how garments operate on multiple levels of overt, nuanced and reversible messaging.
The lexical definitions of the word reversible are key as a point of departure: a. able to be undone. The notion of indeterminacy as part of the ambiguity of clothing and meaning for its maker, wearer, situation and environment. b. made so that either side can be used as the outer or upper side. Both in the literal sense and in the abstract, what is concealed and revealed through the physical properties of the inside and outside of the garments we make? urban reversedress is a three year program of research addresses clothing as communication and a sociological project.
By presenting a program of collaborative research and a personal garment conceived within this model I endeavor to contextualize ideas through technique: overt or nuanced clothing modifications in sewing, reuse of found materials, poetic inscription/digital embroidery as well as branding and fashion mimicry. The personal design is informed by previous clothing series such as resistance wear, apParent apPeril, oc_designs all of which are indicative of the relational play that contextualizes clothing as narrative constructs.
The street is addressed as a democratic space, charged with conflicting expectations and spontaneity and also a space saturated with clothed bodies. The urban landscape is a dynamic invitation for interaction and play where the individual is the ultimate example of the body politic, nomadic mobility and portable display.
The conference paper will be presented concurrently with supporting visual work.