Less Common by Less Common

ISSN 2051-9400

LESS COMMON

THE TEAM EDITOR

XENIA-MARIA SCHĂ&#x153;RMANN DEPUTY EDITOR

FILIP BIGOS FEATURES EDITOR

OSEI BONSU CREATIVE DIRECTOR

YELENA PALMER COPY EDITOR

FI ANDERSON MARKETING DIRECTOR

SARA NASER

CONTACT:

LESSCOMMON@SU.ARTS.AC.UK WWW.LESSCOMMONMAGAZINE.COM WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/LESSCOMMONMAGAZINE FRONT AND BACK COVER PHOTOGRAPHY BY LILLIAN WILKIE (MA FINE ART, CHELSEA) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without the written permisson of the editor. The views expressed in Less Common are those of the respective contributors and not necessary those of the magazine or its publishers. The magazine welcomes ideas and new contributors but cannot assume responsibility for unsolicited submissions.

Publisher: SUARTS Union (Contact: Benedict Butterworth) University of the Arts London 272 High Holborn WC1V 7EY London Printer: Stephens & George Print Group

CONTENTS 02 04 06 10 12 13 14 18 20 26 30 32 38

EDITOR’S LETTER IN CONVERSATION: LESS COMMON MEETS PANACHAI CHAIJIRARAT ALL THE WONDERS LIE WITHIN A STONE’S THROW OF KING’S CROSS STATION... HOW TO GET LOST IN THE CITY YOU HAPPEN TO LIVE IN HYPERREALITY MAPPED OUT UNTITLED, 2012 THE NIGHT TRAIN I AM SPACE FROM PLACES TO NON-PLACES DECONSTRUCTION MACHINES, THE LEFTOVER MESSAGES OF MARX AND DERRIDA CATALONIAN PICCADILLY THE NEAR AND THE ELSEWHERE PAST: PRESENT

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATHALIE ENDERLE (BA MEDIA AND CULTURAL STUDIES, LCC)

EDITOR’S LETTER We live in a world “surrendered to solitary individuality, to the fleeting, the temporal and ephemeral”. While I personally wouldn't agree with Marc Augé about this rather gloomy point of view on The State Of The World we cannot deny that we do indeed live in a world of constant mobility. A world in which places exist that cannot be defined as “relational, historical and concerned with identity”; a world of Non-Places, “where transit points and temporary abodes are proliferating under luxurious or inhuman conditions... where a dense network of means of transport which are also inhabited spaces is developing”. Augé refers specifically to the settings of late capitalism such as shopping centres, airports, hotel chains and motorway stops, places where the individual is passenger as well as costumer, their identity only retrieved “at Customs, at the tollboth, at the check-out counter”. Especially for the CSMers among us going to college means getting out of the big web of non-places that is the London tube, passing through a gigantic construction site to finally use our students IDs (No Pass, No Entry) to check into a building that is more often than not described as, well, sterile. Yes, we all do know non-places. This first issue of the re-launched Less Common will be revolving around Augé's ideas. 02

We're taking you on a journey that starts with temporary sheds inhabited by the Thai working class; the inspiration for Panachai Chaijirarat's so so piece (p.4). From there we'll be returning to London to explore the myths that lie behind the concrete surface of the King’s Cross area (p.6) before travelling abroad again to Catalonia (p.30). We'll board a train (p.16) and let dice guide us on walks through the city (p.10). We'll see how mobile devices act as means to deconstruct information (p.26) and finally revisit our starting point with Anja Crabb's essay (p.38) in which she'll explain how her final collection translates the idea of a vestimentary memory into garments that subsequently serve as anchorage in a world characterised by its fast pace. As well as the printed version, you'll find even more features on our website, including an interview with architect Tomas Klassnik in which we discuss the séance he held with Le Corbusier. Last but not least, I'd like to point out that Less Common will be available as an app shortly. Enjoy, Xenia Schürmann Editor Augé, M. (1995), From Places to Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, Verso: London 2 Pozanesi, S. (2012), The Non-Places of Migrant Cinema in Europe, Third Text, 26:6, 675-690 1

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LILLIAN WILKIE (MA FINE ART, CHELSEA)

IN CONVERSATION: LESS COMMON MEETS PANACHAI CHAIJIRARAT INTERVIEW BY NOVUYO MOYO (BA CRITICISM, COMMUNICATION, CURATION, CSM)

Panachai Chaijirarat is a Londonbased mixed media artist from Thailand studying MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design. I meet Panachai at a popular café chain on a rainy Saturday in Tottenham Court Road. Ignoring the ambient noise, we start talking about his practice and our chat is accompanied by faint jazz sounds in the background. We’re here to discuss his 2012 piece so so, which explores temporal spaces and those who occupy them, whilst also sparking a conversation on the variety of meanings an object can take on. so so is a shed-like structure constructed out of corrugated metal sheets and wooden pallets, among other materials. It mimics the shelters built by construction workers in Thailand that serve as temporary housing throughout the duration of a building job. “You see, if that site was in Thailand”, he says pointing to a building site conveniently located outside our 04

window, “there’d be a lot of those little structures about the place… and then after the building is complete, you wouldn’t see the little structures anymore. They’d move with the builders. It’s linked to that idea of mobility; always moving”. The people who occupy them are “marginal, working class people”; a group of people Panachai has only recently identified with since being herew in London. Concerning this topic of marginality, he tells me, “I see it objectively, but I interpret it subjectively. In a way, I cast myself as the worker. I represent myself within the work because, I’m here and similar to the marginal people in Thailand, I too am marginal. I know that feeling of alienation, being the other; it’s a strange identity”. There is a moment of reflection when he says this. That he is self-aware and conscious of his identity can be attributed to his background in psychology; a subject he studied as an undergraduate in Thailand and which he says helps him read objects.

Panachai’s practice is based mainly on the meta-physicality of objects and he can expand on this philosophy through his work. When working, he asks himself, “What is the story behind the façade?” The artist wants us as viewers to query this as well. For example, there is rust on the very new metal roof sheets in so so, which tells us that the rust has been fabricated and is completely false. In doing this, Panachai is constantly creating a new language between found objects and the objects he makes/casts. This concept of objects having a language confuses me but he quickly explains, saying, “Take a plastic bag for example, normally it’s used as a shopping bag but in other contexts its can be turned into a rubbish bag or be used to cover your head in the rain. With its use, its meaning changes”. The core of his practice — recontextualising objects — is a task Panachai takes seriously even down to the spaces in which his

work is exhibited. so so is more or less site-specific therefore the new Central Saint Martins building was an obviously smart choice. It embodies this idea of transformation in meaning perfectly while also being a space that users inhabit temporarily before moving on. Before it became a college campus, it was uninhabited and prior to that it was used as a grain store. For Panachai, this adds another layer of meaning to so so because it represents a façade; “We have the façade of the old, storing something else. It is similar to my work, where the rust is false because the inside is completely new. Outside it looks like the Thai workers’ structure but inside it’s just a work station; a façade”. Our discussion soon draws to a close and to end I ask Panachai where I can look forward to seeing so so in the near future, upon which, without missing a beat, he answers, “In Less Common”. www.panachaichijirarat.com 05

ALL THE WONDERS LIE WITHIN A STONE’S THROW OF KING’S CROSS STATION... TEXT BY TANYA LOI (MA FINE ART, CSM) PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARIA ALEJANDRA HUICHO (MA FINE ART GRADUATE, CHELSEA)

LUISA KAHLFELDT (BA PRODUCT DESIGN, CSM)

This project was born from the idea of finding new ways to alter the perception of a city and transforming the relationship to the familiar every-day life urban environment. Greatly inspired by the Situationist International and their ideas about urban wandering, aimless drifting and detached observation, I 10

created a set of devices that encourage pedestrians to take off their predictable paths and develop a new awareness of their surroundings. Once the die is rolled, the user refers to the instruction booklet that tells him the method of travel in order to get lost.

HYPERREALITY MAPPED OUT EXCERPT BY NORA ISABELLE HEIDORN (BA CRITICISM, COMMUNICATION, CURATION, CSM)

Maps are just as biased as any other human account of the world. Although most topographical undertakings use informative sources, maps are always selective in what information they use and in what they seek to communicate. Maps are not untrue, but they are made for different purposes, thus they will relate different aspects or parts of the truth. A map will never be able to show everything — or the whole truth — because it is in its nature selective and limited. It will be a mediation of the world that is specific to its society and time of origin. The map will thus reflect the sources and accounts that were available to those who made it and reveal what people believed to be true; their Weltanschauung. The more relevant question today, as we have become wary of the idea that the truth could be told in any account of the world, is to examine the relationship of maps to reality: maps have a referential relationship to the material world, but they are constructs of the mind.

Alfred Korzybski brings this insight to a point, “The map is not the territory, and the name is not the thing”. In what follows, I will examine two contemporary mapping projects in regards to their relationships to reality: a virtual map in a marketing campaign and the artistic rendition of symbols used in mapping. These are maps in their most recent and perhaps most post-modern application. They have laid aside notions of truth to proceed to the ambiguous playground of reality with its layers of reference and representation. Visit www.lesscommonmagazine.com

UNTITLED, 2012

PROJECTED DIGITAL IMAGES FROM VIDEO INSTALLATION STILLS BY CHARASTYLIANI DRANDANKI (MA FINE ART, CHELSEA)

THE NIGHT TRAIN

FANI-LOUISA PARALI (BA SCULPTURE, TEXT BY FANI-LOUISA PARALI (BA SCULPTURE,CAMBERWELL) CAMBERWELL) VIDEO INSTALLATION STILLS BY MONIKA SCHODOWSKA (BA PHOTOGRAPHY, CAMBERWELL)

Let us pause and imagine a night train starting its journey to somewhere. The passengers have boarded the carriage and after finding their seats, they are now filling their space, stretching. Therew is a sense of uneasiness. A man wipes off his sweat with his hat. A train is an extraordinary bundle of relations because it is something through which one goes, it is also something by means of which one can go from one point to another, and then it

is also something that goes by. (Foucault, 1967) The disparate crowd is trying to establish hierarchies amongst its various personalities. The efforts create tensions. The situation has a dark, but also oddly funny character. Some people are curiously observing others. The girl sitting two rows back is wearing a bright pink T-shirt. The drunken woman on the right is seeking possible reasons to wash away her toxic descent. She is loudly talking to the man sitting

opposite her. In this temporary theatre, a series of performances are played out. The audience are the show and the actors are the viewers. But after a little while, the awkward and intense mumblings start to retreat consecutively. Each person returns to their yard; a caricature of private space, long as the distance of two legs branching out. Embarrassment becomes openness and a peculiar mutual understanding is born.

As the train reaches a bend, the moon appears for a moment, a reminder that all of this is happening on the move, in a constant change, while one by one the passengers fall asleep. Sharing, in companionship now, their rest. â&#x20AC;&#x153;As the night deepened, so deepened to me the interest of the scene; for not only did the general character of the crowd materially alter [...], but the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying

day, had now at length gained ascendancy, and threw over every thing a fitful and garish lustre.” (Poe, The Man of the Crowd) The gas light in Poe’s dark world impartially reveals the details of the crowd, like the moon does on this tired group in the wagon. This could be one of the places that Michel Foucault was searching. A small site that becomes a mirror for a bigger picture. A realisable utopia, where the arrangement among the separate elements of a group becomes more comprehensible. This site carries the property of being in relation with other sites. But in such a way as “to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect” (Foucault). Foucault wanted to give these sites a name, heterotopias. In the heterotopia of this half

luminous - half dark train different human beings, their dreams and their fears come together. It reminds us to consider how we communicate with ourselves and with others, to understand power and the loss of it. “The performance of an individual accentuates certain matters and conceals others. If we see perception as a form of contact and communion, then control over what is perceived is control over contact that is made, and the limitation and regulation of what is shown is a limitation and regulation of contact.” (Goffman, 1959) If rhetoric is the art of convincing and these people are each, in their very particular way, trying to convince each other and win their ground in this moving site, then maybe the time in which they share their sleep, they

have the chance to exercise a different kind of rhetoric, a silent one. In its silence, disturbed only by sounds of the train, frontiers and borders are forgotten or even broken. The flashing images that pass when watching out of the window resemble our fragile attempts to connect with each other, momentarily and with uncertainty. Attempts that sometimes remain untraceable. The crowd is absent, in relation to each other, but also present. It has settled in the warmth of common ground, common experience, resting from the power seeking relations of the world that is awake. The passengers are placing loneliness aside, just for this brief other time; this heterochrony.

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IN ITS SILENCE, DISTURBED ONLY BY SOUNDS OF THE TRAIN, FRONTIERS AND BORDERS ARE FORGOTTEN OR EVEN BROKEN.

I AM SPACE

A COLLABORATION BETWEEN INES NETO DOS SANTOS (BA GRAPHIC AND MEDIA DESIGN, LCC) AND LIZZIE KLOTZ, KATHY RICHARDSON, YASMIN SAS AND ANNE-LISE MARIE HEARN (LONDON STUDIO CENTRE)

“I Am Space is a collaborative project focusing upon the notion of bodies in space. It's a collection of spatial explorations using the body and movement as mediums. Working with four dancers, the venture explores ideas of negative space (the empty area around us through which we move) versus positive space (the space our bodies occupy at any given moment). As well as the various ways bodies interact and exist with these spaces. As an artist and designer, I'm very interested in abstract concepts — such as space, time and experience — as well as the notion of body. My interest in these concepts and my constant questioning of what constitutes empty space led me to this experiment/performancebased project, which is still in its development.” Ines Neto Dos Santos Visit www.lesscommonmagazine.com

FROM PLACES TO NON-PLACES PHOTOGRAPHY BY LILLIAN WILKIE (MA FINE ART, CHELSEA)

DECONSTRUCTION MACHINES, THE LEFTOVER MESSAGES OF MARX AND DERRIDA AN ESSAY ATTEMPT BY LARS WERNER (BA SCULPTURE, CAMBERWELL)

London, 8th Nov.2012; the year 2012 in the 23rd year of the World Wide Web, more than 120 years after Marx’ death, 8 years after Derrida died of pancreatic cancer (propably the same year, my grandmother died of it, too) and one day after the 26

inauguration of the new Chineseleader-generation. The messages: Search “Specters of Marx” About 947,000 results (0.38 seconds)

Search Results to “Ghosts of Specters of Marx of Derrida”: Specters of Marx - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Specters_of_Marx Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning & the New International Philosophy › General Rating: 3.5-25 reviews Specters of Marx is a major new book from the renowned French... In Specters of Marx, Derrida undertakes this task within the context of a critique of the new... From Spectres of Marx, by Jacques Derrida www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ philosophy/works/.../derrida2.ht...Excerpt from Derrida’s 1994 work in which he considers ideology and Marx. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, The Work of Mourning & the... www.amazon.com/Specters-Marx-Mourning.../dp/0415389577 Linking Hamlet’s ghost with the opening of the Communist Manifesto, the noted French philosopher (Aporias, LJ 2/15/94) meditates on the state and future of Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Spectres ... books. google.com › Philosophy › Movements › Deconstruction  With the publication of Specters of Marx in 1993, Jacques Derrida redeemed a long-standing pledge to confront Marx’s texts directly and in detail. Specters of Marx by Jacques Derrida - Reviews, Discussion... www.goodreads.com/book/show/80473.Specters_of_ Marx Rating: 4.0-711 vote 25 May 2006 – Specters of Marx has 711 ratings and 26 reviews. William said: I don’t know if I would call this a profound book about Marx, but that’s not to say...Terri Senft: For Students: Close Readings: Specters of Marx www.terrisenft.net/students/readings/derrida-marx.php Terri Senft’s reading of “Injunctions of Marx” the first chapter of Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx. (Note: Derrida’s book was hotly debated when it came out.)  Specters of Marx «The Pinocchio Theory www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=474 8 Feb 2006 – I finally read a book I should have read long ago, Derrida’s Specters of Marx. I found it strangely disappointing. I’m not even sure the book is... This is all nothing. 27

Just the outcome of one move the philosopher did in his mind. Leftovers, trails, fragments, that the engine is providing on the first hit.

never stopped reading him, but now they are people I know, who talk about him. Which makes me think — is this how history repeats itself?

I don’t want to write about the text — if Marx is haunting Europe, what Derrida's nightmare is about. I am not haunted by Marx and as I consume information basically over the machine Derrida is no more than a name and links. Trails, which are there to lead me to an aim. Information in pieces.

How are they different to the first readers? They think they are. Now they have the weapons of reflection, deconstruction, criticism; they have a Marx that is haunted by Derrida. Everything about their consumption is more developed. Yet, do not all humans believe themselves literate enough to handle the thoughts that they feed themselves with, these weapons of other people?

I am haunted by beliefs and opinions. Everyone talks, everyone thinks, and since the engine exists, everyone is able to make themselves heard. I don’t go with that. I read the news. Headlines, basically. Everything below them is more or less an opinion. What is left after that? Hackneyed ideas, shards of opinion, superficial notes forming autonomous pictures. I heard Derrida saying a ghost is haunting Europe, the ghost of Marxism.

Soon an edited version of Mein Kampf is going to be published in Germany. With our superior new weapons we shall read that, too. Study it and compare it to Marx — a rhetorical, theoretical, brain-based re-enactment of the 20th century. How will our First and Second World Wars look then? Will they be a talk show, or a two-parted documentary? What about the Cold War — silence in the seats of the studio? Black screens?

In Germany they have started reading Marx again. Maybe they

Or no wars? Just the leftover

voice-messages of people that love us, or want to do business with us?1 While we are out, far away from the messages, two wars in the head. Two wars, that will not happen, that we are just using to cover up our personal affairs. We search to deconstruct the from too many information and too many opinions distracted soul-pattern until we are able to see, what is beneath it, what went wrong. What? And in Germany they read Derrida, they study Foucault, they have a well-trained army. Does everybody have this vision sometimes? You think about Marx as a poor, stingy subtenant of Engels, whose belly is growing, while he eats cake directly out of the fridge. With this picture in mind, the path his thoughts have taken concludes logically in the behaviours of the Chinese regime. 2

Still, it makes me laugh, when I think of this man and that, in a way, he is responsible for the mass-production of all the phones

“

around me. Smaller machines, constantly deconstructing the information of his life, Derrida’s Life, China, the Web itself. So everything becomes harder to find. There is already nothing anymore about her. I send a message to my sister in Germany when did grandma die? Her response says puh, 2003 or 2004? I wait... Another message mother says, it was the year you took part in that youth competition “2005. Youth-Art-Price of Saxony, my name” Search Results to “2005. YouthArt-Price of Saxony, my name” 0 Other suggestions: 3,640 results (0.30 seconds) Inspired by The Call of Mist, dir. John Akomfrahs, 1998 2 Is Marx’ Manifest a forbidden book in China? 1

EVERYONE TALKS, EVERYONE THINKS, AND SINCE THE ENGINE EXISTS, EVERYONE IS ABLE TO MAKE THEMSELVES HEARD 29

CATALONIAN PICCADILLY

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALBERT CASTELLORT (BA MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES, LCC)

The city of London is a window to almost everything that happens around the globe.

national delicacies. We keep looking back no matter how mobile our lives become.

People from different backgrounds move here for all sorts of reasons but we all come with our own culture, our own beliefs, our own ideologies and our own identities. We all merge in this cosmopolis but thanks particularly to digital media we stay tuned into what happens back home, sometimes more aware of what happens there than what actually happens in London. We’ve all merged into being Londoners but it’s hard to ever really move away from ones original home and from what happens there as events may affect some of our best friends and closest family. We can all think of friends who watch their national TV online, who buy newspapers from their home countries and who organise dinner parties where they cook

This is why I say that almost anything happening around the globe has at some point a resonance in a city like London.

A clear example of this was on the 11th September last year. Whilst in most parts of the globe this date resonates as the anniversary of the Al-Qaeda attacks in the USA, for me and for every Catalan, it is our national day. On this date people commemorate the last day of Catalan autonomy before the region was defeated by King Philip V of Spain in 1714, the final year in the War of the Spanish Succession. As a result of Catalonia’s defeat, the political map of Spain changed to impose a uniform system eliminating – among many other things – the institutions of

self-government of the Catalan Countries (Catalunya, Aragó, València and Balears) and their civil liberties. With this, the seemingly never-ending political, social and economic problems between Catalonia and Spain really started: prohibitions of Catalan language, claims from Catalonia for the right to selfgovernment, prejudices between each other, economic spoliation of Catalonia by Spain, etc. The root of the problem is a cultural one. Although Spain’s transition into a democracy during the late 1970s enabled our culture and history to be constitutionally recognised and Catalan was subsequently allowed to be the main language in Catalan schools, the problems haven’t ceased. In fact, over the past ten years they seem to have increased. Spain doesn’t want to recognise Catalonia as a nation; the

Education Minister José Ignacio Wert said that Catalan students should be “spanishised’’ (just like Native Americans or Africans had to be “spanishised’’ or at least “civilised’’ when Europe was colonising those continents). Politicians have compared Catalan education to a Nazi school system because lessons are held in Catalan – but isn’t it natural that we are educated in our native language? After all, Catalans still receive education in Spanish as well. There is also said to be an economic spoliation of Catalonia by Spain. When extreme independentists say this, one obviously doubts the claim but when it is supported by unbiased papers such as The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal as well as studies by economists at Harvard University one may start to believe it. Speculation is only increased by the Spanish

government’s silence on the issue and there’s barely any transparency for the public to know where the money goes. Yet the right to decide if we want to be an independent state is denied to us and demanding it has only brought trouble. A Colonel of the Spanish army even stated: “Catalan independence? Over my dead body”. Such words can only remind me of the early 1930s in the days preceding the Spanish Civil War. There are lots of Catalans who believe that it is better to separate from Spain. In fact, the number seems to keep on growing: according to statistics by the Institut Català d’Estadística, support for independence has increased from about 15 to 20 per cent of the Catalan population in 2000 to about 45 per cent in 2012. We want the right to hold a referendum over independence from Spain and so we demonstrated on the 11th September 2012. In Barcelona

1.5 million people marched under the slogan “Catalonia, new State in Europe’’. This is about 25 per cent of the Catalan population – the equivalent in Britain would be a demonstration of about 15 million people, imagine that! Numerous smaller marches also occurred around the world; in cities such as New York, Paris and London, where there was a concentration of about 200 people in Piccadilly Circus. We live in a world where everything moves and flows, a world where things continuously change, in a Europe that claims to stand for democracy and common will, a Europe that allegedly learns from each other. In my opinion, Spain ought to learn from Britain’s consent to the Scottish democratic vote on independence in 2014 and stop using its constitution as the inquisition once used the Bible. However this might be too idealistic just like believing that Catalonia will be independent one day.

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WE LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE EVERYTHING MOVES AND FLOWS, A WORLD WHERE THINGS CONTINUOUSLY CHANGE

THE NEAR AND THE ELSEWHERE

BA FASHION PRINT

GITA OMRI

BA FASHION DESIGN WOMENSWEAR

JANET SARTOR

PHOTOGRAPHY: NAA TEKI LEBAR HAIR AND MAKE-UP: NERINGA SUTKUTE USING BECCA STYLING: AISHA MOHAMMED MODEL: BELLA @ BOOKINGS PRODUCTION: XENIA SCHUERMANN, GUTEKATZE PRODUCTIONS PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: SARAH LIU

BA FASHION DESIGN WOMENSWEAR BA FASHION DESIGN WITH KNITWEAR

CHU CHUN

CHIARA TOMMENCIONA PISAPIA

BA JEWELLERY DESIGN

BIRGIT TOKE TAUKA FRIETMANN

BA FASHION DESIGN WOMENSWEAR

NINA TANSKALA

PAST:PRESENT

TEXT BY ANJA CLAIRE CRABB (MA FASHION AND THE ENVIRONMENT, LCF) PHOTOGRAPHY BY OLLIE MORRIS

Looking at the state of the world, I ask myself: How can I justify buying more stuff? And as a designer, how can I justify producing more stuff? In grappling with these questions I was determined to find forms of fashion design and consumption that are meaningful and personal. This search has resulted in a collection of garments that allow wearers to take inspiration from their own experiences. These experiential memories are in turn made physical in the clothing: the collection invites the wearer to cocreate the garments using either movable and removable sticker dots or, on a more symbolic level, hair embroidery. The garments themselves: blank canvasses that allow space for thoughts to be made tangible. The project title, Past:Present, is derived from a quote by T.S. Eliot: “Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future,and time future contained in time past”. The mélange of timeframes are reflected in what we wear: how we dress (in the present) embodies elements of the future (how we wish to be remembered) and elements of the past (by drawing on previous experiences). 38

MEMORY LANE Memory is a key theme for Past:Present; after all, our memories make us who we are. Our experiences form our personalities and we draw on our histories to help us make decisions in the present, for the future. Clothing, as an expression of the self, is also an expression of memories. Old clothing allows us to remember who we were: perhaps we could be that person again or we consciously discard this old clothing and with it our previous identities. On the radio I heard someone describe a pair of tartan drainpipe trousers he wore as a punk in the 70s: apparently he can’t pull the trouser leg up beyond his knee now but throwing them away would feel like throwing a part of himself away. In a conversation with my mother, she described the physical nearness of her deceased mother’s clothing as the reason she cannot bear to keep them: the memories carry more shadow than light. Memory can therefore also hinder use. We discard clothing because of the negative memories attached to it or some clothes are kept but never worn for reasons connected to the past. Yet all these memories, negative and positive, form who we are today.

According to an article in New Scientist (October 2012), memories are also important in shaping our well-being: they act as a kind of ballast that holds us steady during times of stress; they can suggest ways to solve problems and offer comfort when we are wounded. In fact, new ways of treating depression targets memory problems directly. The outcome of my project is therefore intended as a means to access or express past experiences in order to contribute to our well-being. THE MYTH OF INDIVIDUALITY Fashion uses individuality to sell dreams, lifestyles and identities — for the main purpose of making profit. These identities and lifestyles are transient, they go in and out of fashion, thus encouraging us to follow these trends and buy, buy, buy the next big thing. We are told fashion will make us distinguished and different — we might stand out for a few weeks if we’re lucky — but how long was it until everyone was wearing last season’s shade nude jackets, bag and shoes? Vivienne Westwood commented, “Everybody looks like clones and the only people you notice are my age”. Perhaps that is because older people have a wider variety of memories to reference and express in their outfits. For younger generations, individualism has largely become a mass-produced illusion. The realisation that individuality is a concept exploited and perpetuated through consumerism, led me to seek alternative ways of authentic self40

expression through fashion. Past:Present proposes: don’t rely on i-D, Dior and Beyond Retro to express yourself by buying stuff, try being yourself first by maintaining the link between your past and your future. ETERNALLY EPHEMERAL According to Marc Augé we live in a “world surrendered to solitary individuality, to the fleeting, the temporary and the ephemeral”. Memories, too, may not only be ephemeral but also inaccurate when we begin to confuse them with imagination. Memory and imagination go hand in glove: the act of remembering is a creative one involving imagination. In fact, both processes share many neurological processes. These various types of memory, those that are ephemeral as well as others that are etched into the brain, are represented in my project’s designs. Wearers partake in infusing their garments with their own experiences, thus personalising them and inspiring the wearers to reflect. Can I justify buying and producing more stuff? It depends on the stuff. Rather than solely advocating buying and producing less stuff, I advocate fashion that is a material manifestation of our memories. This approach, contrary to acquiescing to the transient values superimposed by an industry primarily interested in endless consumption, breathes life into garments and renders them a genuine expression of ourselves.