The Look
materials: different fashion magazines, copy machine, Berlin teenage girls
location: Createurope - Goethe Institut, Berlin, Germany
date: Aug 28th 2009
The lab is a visual research into the ‘real’ garment: clothes we wear in our daily lives and the ‘represented’ garment: focusing on clothes depicted in fashion magazines. The research aims to question and shift the fashion images we aspire to into a new tangible reality. The participants, teenagers from Berlin, were asked to bring a magazine to the lab that shows an image of their favourite and most desired clothing style i.e. reportage of an idol. The core questions posed during the lab were: What is the exact description of the clothing style (i.e. colour, size, material) and to what extent do contextual elements and associations (i.e. text, branding, people) influence and therefore define the represented garment? What are the differences and/or similarities between the desired and your own clothes? The participants were asked to manipulate and modify their collected magazine images by reproducing and augmenting them on a photocopy machine. These black and white A3 photocopies then functioned as 'garments' during the photo shoot which took place as a conclusion to the lab. The stereotypical roles within the framework of a fashion photo shoot are altered. The teenagers act simultaneously as models, fashion critics, stylists and designers during the photo shoot; posing, questioning, arranging and creating. These new images, created during the The Look lab, were selected and edited to form a full colour fashion editorial, ready to (again) be published…
models/fashion critics/stylists/designers: Henriette B, Jenny, Linda K, Maite N, Rosa G, Elisabeth H, Sophie S, Viviane A, Elena F, Linh N
photographer/editor: Elisa Marchesini
MySpace.com / Graz
materials: 20 slides of MySpace.com images & students
location: Graz, Austria
date: 11/10/08 - 20/10/08
At the muliticultural St. Andrea highschool I worked with students and asked them to bring images connected to their feeling of ‘Heimat’. The material they brought were surprisingly all taken from their MySpace.com accounts. These images became temporary prints on the clothes of the posing students.
The performance was part of the As_Tide week in Graz 2008, this week focussed on different aspects of ‘intercultural dialogue’ and in specific the concept of ‘Heimat’.