FashionPraxisLab – Fashion and Politics at The New School
Our book Animal Laborans is finished! The result from our book sprint in May 2016 is now ready-to-read. As usual, it is a mongrel assembly of thoughts and ideas, mixed and matched by all of our contributors, and with – hand-made – illustrations.
Enjoy the PDF : AnimalLaborans-w
also available as print-on-demand at Amazon.
Sourcing Journal Online reports today on two fires, a garment factory in China and a textile factory in Bangladesh, that claimed the lives of six and three workers respectively. (The headline reports 11 deaths, however the source articles report six and three.) The Fashion Praxis Lab demands safe and just working conditions for everyone, everywhere, always. We hoped never to fly the flag since we began work on it in February, however upon reading the news this morning – during work on a book on labor, no less – we had to.
Book-Sprint-On-Demand! Between May 23rd and 27th, the Fashion Praxis Lab hosts a book sprint on the topic of Fashion and Labor at Parsons School of Design. As its point of departure, we will reexamine parts of Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, especially the distinction between labor, work and action/praxis, to see how these categories may help us see the labor of fashion from new angles: from the perils of sweatshop labor, design labor, glamor labor, and internment labor to the mythical deeds of excellence that are the aesthetic actions of true courage.
On March 2nd, 2016, the United States Supreme Court heard the most important reproductive rights case in almost 25 years. The decision, likely to come down in June 2016, will determine whether Texas can shut down nearly all abortion care providers in the state and prevent 5.4 million women of reproductive age from accessing the healthcare they need. Using craft as activism, artist Chi Nguyen — in partnership with the Textile Arts Center and the Center for Reproductive Rights — is holding a series of stitch-ins to make physical the number of women whose right to safe and legal abortion is currently at risk. With each line representing an individual woman, the 5.4 Million and Counting project is only finished when all 5.4 million lines are embroidered.
The public is invited to Draw the Line by joining or hosting a stitch-ins, or by sending in their own 10×10” swatches with as many tally marks (卌) as they would like to embroider. All swatches will be patched onto a larger quilt to demonstrate the public’s support for safe and legal abortion.
If you cannot join the stitch-in session but would like to participate, please follow the directions below:
The Politics of Pockets: an exploration into material inventions
(and interventions)
This talk and workshop delves into a history of pockets. Drawing on archives, patents, utopian feminist literature and science and technology studies I explore pockets as socio-political mobility technologies that shape, and are shaped by, moving bodies, gender relations and the politics of place. I aim to suggest that these material inventions (and interventions) can be examined as a critical means through which different bodies are made to fit, both physically and ideologically, with ideas about being in and moving through public space. We will make some pockets, re-imagining how they fit our bodies, clothes and contexts. In doing so, we will start to question the nature of these holding devices – asking what kinds of work they do, who they enable or inhibit and what they can tell us about mobility and power.
Kat Jungnickel is a researcher and lecturer in the Sociology Department, Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research explores mobilities, digital technology cultures, DiY making communities and inventive methods. www.katjungnickel.com
Come and explore the politics of pockets and add new capacities to your work wear!
Tuesday, April 5th, 6-8pm
Room L702 (2w13th street)
The mini symposium on Fashion and Labor was an informal event where many different perspectives on labor and dress were presented (Elizabeth Wissinger and Laura Liu pictured above). The subject offers many points of departure as well as intersecting lines of design, work, labor, praxis and politics. A possible book-sprint starts to materialize.
In conjunction with the Workwear/Abiti da Lavoro exhibition at The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center’s Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery, the Fashion Praxis Lab hosts a mini symposium on the topic of Fashion and Labor. With contributors from across the New School and beyond, we will have a series of very short presentations and an informal discussion on various approaches to labor within the realm of fashion, spanning from localized artisan work, work garments, labor practices, glamour labor, praxis, allure and globalization.
Please feel free to visit the exhibit at the Kellen Gallery before the symposium.
Wednesday March 16th 6-8pm
at New School University Center room U412
Welcome!
On Sunday March 6th, 2016, the New York Historical Society hosted the inaugural conference in honor of Jean Dubinsky Appleton, titled Sweat Equity: Women in the Garment Industry. The conference concluded with a panel from Parsons, moderated by Fashion Praxis member, Timo Rissanen. BFA Fashion Design senior Nora Maloney spoke of her thesis project, a collection of zero waste garments, developed with the support of her thesis instructors Lester Rodriguez and Jennifer Belton, and a fashion magazine focusing on sustainability. The magazine features interviews with Livia Firth and Andrew Morgan and work by fellow Parsons students. BFA Fashion Design junior Casey Barber discussed how participating in the Parsons Design Lab course, Design for Care, in fall 2015 is now informing her studies in her core courses, with a rich view of sustainability in fashion design. The panel finished by presenting the flag currently being made by Fashion Praxis – a flag we hope never to fly.
Yesterday we started the process of making the flag. It is saying “A Garment Worker Was Killed Yesterday” and will be flown from Parsons to highlight the structural violence inherent within the current system of fashion production. The flag will now be moving between classes as students and faculty will help attach the letters while engaging with the topic.
Many hands are needed to change things. Awareness is not enough. Action needs to be cultivated. A letter at the time.
In 1920 the NAACP began flying a black flag from the windows of its headquarters at 69 Fifth Avenue when a lynching had occurred. The words on the flag says simply, “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday.” The threat of losing its lease forced the NAACP to discontinue the practice in 1938.
A keen observer will notice that the buildings just behind the flag in the photo is now the central Parsons campus on the intersection of 5th Avenue and West 13th street.
Honoring the NAACP campaign against segregation and racial violence, and having Parsons as a next-door neighbor to NAACP’s former headquarters, the fashion praxis lab will produce a flag to fly out its window as a marker against violence and exploitation in fashion production. Flying such colors at Parsons points to how fashion production, on a regular basis and systemic level, feeds into the oppression and death of workers.
The Fashion Praxis lab will host the workshop to make the flag on March 1st, at 6pm in room L702 (2w13th, the building just behind the flag in the 1938 photo above). We hope to see you there.