play 'art history' as you browse
ILLEGIBLE:
PRECARIOUS MATERIALITY,
SYMBIOTIC PROXIMITY
"We are contaminated by our encounters; they change who we are as we make way for others."
- Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World
​
My aim is to clothe good ancestors.
​
The ongoing collection Illegible plays with and questions the legibility of nature under late-capitalism; it ponders what the unruly's potential is for the human body and its encountrers. Poking pores in the separation of humans from multi-species living, leaking across boundaries, the collection's pulse is longevity, re-examined. It looks to upcycling (or, the delaying of an object's submersion in a landfill) and material sourcing in detail to ultimately produce garments, intimates and accessories that embrace decay and the fluidity of human encounters with living and non-living entities in today's habitable landscapes. llegible is being developed with the hope of serving as an example for how garments might decay, such that when a garment comes from the Earth, it may return to it without harm.
​
Illegible approaches longevity less as a timeframe of durability and lifetime of a product, but moreso as the lifetime of the system in which it is produced - in this case the Earth system. The longevity of the garment must not be at odds with the longevity of the resources from which it is extracted and formed, for as industry as we know it might be slowed and re-thought, extraction might be symbiotic; this entails thinking alongside Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass in her weaving of indigenous wisdom with scientific knowledge, which might, "allow us to imagine a different relationship, in which people and land are good medicine for each other."
​
When Tsing speaks to "collaborative survival in precarious times" and what potentials exist under paracapitalism for "our multispecies descendants," it brings to mind how entirely irrelevant luxury is to other species, and of how longevity and memory are perhaps luxury's only non-destructive potential for the Earth system as a whole. Luxury fashion goods need tremendous re-thinking from a socio-material perspective. I wish to borrow the tremendous strength of cultural heritage in luxury and bring it into conversation with how we present, living ancestors to later Earth and later generations produce and consume with future descendants. Why must durability be made a luxury, and in what ways has late-capitalism framed and forced the availability of resources such that this is the case?
​
​
​
"For humanists, assumptions of progressive human mastery have encouraged
a view of nature as a romantic space of
anti-modernity". - Tsing
In developing this collection, I have been sitting in the tension between the two worlds the above statement speaks to. How might we materially reject this notion of nature, "as a romantic space of anti-modernity," without embedding the ideal of human mastery over nature?
​
Illegible approaches this critical question through means of navigating legibility in the natural world and how the unruly can propose alternatives within capitalist ruin - which is not to embrace demise from a framework of pessimistic inevitability, but to imagine the parameters for life within the damage that is already done such that life becomes crucial to ruin. This is considered via intimates that re-think the proximity of breathable fabrics such as laces to the human microbiome and the chemical origins of such materials, and where lace-ness appears as a fluid boundary in the natural world in mosses and lichen.
This theoretical framework manifests in the topographic coat, a 100% recycled post-consumer plastics "eco-fi" felt coat whose construction depends on the use of Gaia GPS's topographic contour lines, thereby reflecting a distortion of construction of the garment as we know it. the process for this coat began with assembling a traditional coat formed on my body and not from an existing pattern, then cutting the coat entirely apart along projected topographic lines informed by Black Mountain and my own body, then re-assembled along those lines. More on this theory is examined in the lichen cube, a bag whose various faces mimic and disorient QR codes through topographic renderings covered in lichen and thereby rendered illegible. This was the first prototype of the Illegible collection, before I knew there was a collection to make. As I began to think, dabble, play and read more into the ubiquity of the natural world being scannable, made into inventory, and that inventory being monetized again - via barcodes, QR codes, topographic maps, linograph maps, and all of the philosophical weight each of these carries in the nourishment, or lack-thereof, between creatures known as human and the rest of the natural world - I landed on illegibility as the sacred space between being known and seen, while remaining unknown, untouched, and lovingly unseen. Thus, as I reconsidered the lichen I was layering for aesthetic's sake alone, I began to think about the QR code, the ubiquity of its mise-en-abyme of squares, of oversized pixels our cameras can't help but capture, read, and re-direct our attention to whatever outcome the QR-placer demands. Did this natural topography in the build of a play on the water-usage of luscious, green golf courses already have something to say on legibility?
Illegible introduces an unraveling of the inventorying of the natural world, of which we are indeed also nature. Clothing is simply a means of our skin interfacing with other skins, with bacteria, pollutants, irritants, medicines, and more. Ultimately, Illegible meditates in the possibilities of the following: where legibility demands permanence and control over nature, the illegible allows the unruly to embrace philosophies of symbiosis, decay, and confronts the interface of multi-species encounter in the after-life of human-made materials, tools, and means of expression.
​
All materials are sourced naturally and hand-dyed non-toxically without compromise. Upcycled metals included are made safe for sensitive, allergen-prone skin with non-toxic protective coating.
​
Further readings:
Intro to lichen philosophical theory.
Future Flora & lingerie interfacing the vaginal microbiome.
*See bottom of page for full reading list.
Screenshot from Gaia GPS of topographic map of Black Mountain, Missouri, the shadow of which was home to my grandfather and the region of Missouri where my family now owns land.
Aesthetic/material research phase of Illegible highlighting embroidery pattern for intimates and gold fasteners found in my grandfather's now-defunct workshop, used in prototyping.
Prototype development in curved, anti-barcode beading on upcycled blazer. Materials include irregular potato pearls in olive, lava stones in white, and upcycled chain from my purse.
Pattern-making from cut-out segments of topographic map of Black Mountain; back-panel of topographic coat.
Wax drawing by Valerie Hammond.
The Lichen Cube prototypel
A selection of materials from the Illegible research phase, featuring beads for upcycling, preserved reindeer moss (lichen, a misnommer), and other preserved lichens.
A topographic map of Mount Washington in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where famed American naturalist Samuel Scudder hiked in search of butterfly species to classify in the mid 1800's. From "Butterfly People: An American encounter with the beauty of the world" by William Leach.
"Lichens are usually conceived as a symbiosis between fungi and algae. Each lichen, then, brings together (at least) two separate kingdoms of life in a relationship that functions like an organism in its own right. Since the nineteenth century, “lichenologists” have put forward many theories and metaphors to explain why this happens: Lichens are fungi that have discovered agriculture; lichen fungi are parasites that have become benevolent; lichen algae are solar panels for the fungi; lichen fungi are greenhouses for the algae.
If such theories are limited to the history of science and the ontology of lichens themselves, recent political and cultural theorists evoke lichens with broader implications. In Donna Haraway’s work, for instance, lichens are non-metaphorical signals for multispecies processes of “becoming-with”; for Richard Halperin, they signify that nature has never been heteronormative."
​
- Derek Woods and Amelia Groom for diffrakt
An early sketch of the eco-fi felt coat constructed from stitching that matches the topographic map of Black Mountain, Missouri.
Sketch of the first-ever barcode, which was initially a bullseye rather than linear as we know it today. Invented by Norman J. Woodland and Bernard Silver for a grocery store client interested in greater efficiency in inventory.
Process of cleaning and sealing upcycled metal rings for use in lingerie production - hand-painted with Simple Shine jewellery sealant that is non-toxic and allergy safe.
Material testing in studio.
Process of projecting the black mountain topographic map from Gaia GPS on to the base-garment, constructed from eco-fi felt. The natural topography of the coat was left in-place to allow for some warping of the line projections.
